Our change of plans saw us heading off on a four hour car trip to Halong Bay. We have met people here from Italy and India, countries not really known for organized or safe driving, saying they thought traffic here was insane so we feel justified in our amazement at the madness. It's funny though how quickly you become immune to scraping out of head on collisions with mere millimeters to spare. We all dozed and rested and hoped for the best.
We were all feeling a little down about being in Vietnam. Sunny, easy, friendly Laos seemed a long way away and we missed it. We drove for four hours through semi urbanized, semi industrialized, smoggy, dusty, grey, ugly landscape. Factories and smoke stacks loomed out of rice paddies and were built nestled up to houses, scarring the landscape and spewing pollution. Buildings were going up everywhere but the developments were surrounded by decay - buildings half finished, bridges with wires protruding out of precarious places, no apparent rubbish collection system for a country of 90 million people. 90 million people!!!!!!! Stark, utilitarian, soviet style buildings pepper an already bleak landscape. It's supposed to be progress but it doesn't look or feel like it.
Halong wharf was no more appealing. Hundreds of tourists bustled onto the 600 tourist boats waiting at the crumbling concrete wharf. I immediately regret our decision to change our plans and come to Halong. It was the reason we had decided not to visit there in the first place.
Let's just say things went from bad to worse. Others on the cruise proceeded to drink from lunch time well into the night. The tourist boats were like dodgem cars on water. We were taken to a floating village that had a steady stream of tourists rowing through all day every day. The food was average. The company was well below average. It was freezing cold and fairly uncomfortable. It seemed we were stuck on Eurotrash express for the night and there was no escape. We did a canoeing trip the next morning where we sat in cold puddles of water and rowed round a bay dotted with other tourist boats. I swore and cursed and spat. I was fuming with anger and bitterly disappointed and I was taking it out on my nearest and dearest (sorry guys).
We were supposed to travel with this group to another location and spend Christmas eve and Christmas day with them but we promptly requested to cut our tour short and make a beeline back to Hanoi. I'm happy to say we were so pleased to get back to Hanoi that it felt like a homecoming.
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