Hanoi bay and beyond
Well, the last day in Hanoi was filled with the usual Tourist things, a visit to the water puppets, alot of wandering and drinking, quite an interesting city, in a crazy kind of way.
we took the manditory tour to Halong Bay, its basically a place with lots of caves, and you stay on a sorto f modified old chinese junk, the tour group was filled with the manditory Australians, nice people and the caves were, well caves.... nice to look at but you wouldn't wanan spend alot of time there.
contrary to the multiple horror stories i've heard, the boat was nice, the food (even vegetarian) was good, and all up it was a good solid experience. our guide "han", was entertaning, his sense of comedic timing, and the way he rpeeated himself twice in every 2 sentances, was most amusing.
got off the boat, and with Han's negotiating got a moto (motocycle) to the bus station, the guys tried to screw us when we got off, seriously, one thing about this country I simply can't get over the fact I'm getting shafted, every step of the way. Its so bad for tourism, and frankly it pisses me off, but according to other travelers, Halong is the worst for it... dodgy f*ckung country!.
so the bus was traumatic and frankly my sore are is a testiment to that, a 4 hourbus ride, with probably close to 40+ people on a bus licensed to carry 28 (i'm being VERY conservative re the 40 people).
I and Paulina were up the back in that little space between the back seats, and the one in front, she was sitting on a little plastic stool and I was sitting on a metal box (and so were a hell of alot of locals), it was aweful and there is no G rated version to describe how my arse is feeling today. The vietnamese seemed to think it was funny, and even though there was another tall dutch guy on board, when I stood up to stretch i got ALOT of attention, and a thumbs up fro mthe inspector.
We're currently doing the TET (NYE) count down, basically its more like xmas where shit closes for a few days and while we're in Nimh Binh (funny huh?), the big one is to get to a big city before the shit closes down..
we took the manditory tour to Halong Bay, its basically a place with lots of caves, and you stay on a sorto f modified old chinese junk, the tour group was filled with the manditory Australians, nice people and the caves were, well caves.... nice to look at but you wouldn't wanan spend alot of time there.
contrary to the multiple horror stories i've heard, the boat was nice, the food (even vegetarian) was good, and all up it was a good solid experience. our guide "han", was entertaning, his sense of comedic timing, and the way he rpeeated himself twice in every 2 sentances, was most amusing.
got off the boat, and with Han's negotiating got a moto (motocycle) to the bus station, the guys tried to screw us when we got off, seriously, one thing about this country I simply can't get over the fact I'm getting shafted, every step of the way. Its so bad for tourism, and frankly it pisses me off, but according to other travelers, Halong is the worst for it... dodgy f*ckung country!.
so the bus was traumatic and frankly my sore are is a testiment to that, a 4 hourbus ride, with probably close to 40+ people on a bus licensed to carry 28 (i'm being VERY conservative re the 40 people).
I and Paulina were up the back in that little space between the back seats, and the one in front, she was sitting on a little plastic stool and I was sitting on a metal box (and so were a hell of alot of locals), it was aweful and there is no G rated version to describe how my arse is feeling today. The vietnamese seemed to think it was funny, and even though there was another tall dutch guy on board, when I stood up to stretch i got ALOT of attention, and a thumbs up fro mthe inspector.
We're currently doing the TET (NYE) count down, basically its more like xmas where shit closes for a few days and while we're in Nimh Binh (funny huh?), the big one is to get to a big city before the shit closes down..
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