Hanoi
After a quite decent night of sleep, further extended by a multi-hour delay due to track maintenance, we grabbed our luggage, disembarked, made our way through the crowds, and were promptly scammed by a taxi driver while trying to get to the bus station. Clearly we didn’t realize we were being scammed at the time, but it happened. I hadn’t done my homework with respect to researching Hanoi public transportation (mistake #1), so when a driver approached us offering a metered taxi, I agreed without walking to the street first (mistake #2). In other countries in Asia, a metered taxi is worth its weight in gold, as the price will be much lower than the end result of haggling. As I learned later, some of the metered taxis in Hanoi have doctored meters that race through the fare at about ten times the normal rate. We didn’t realize this until we arrived at the bus station and since our luggage was being held ransom in the trunk, we had no choice but to pay up (almost $30 for a fifteen minute ride).
The one silver lining – besides learning a good travel tip the hard way – is that our driver got us to the bus station very quickly and, by complete dumb luck, we arrived just a few minutes before the next bus to Cat Ba Island was leaving. Still feeling the burn of getting ripped off, we triple-checked the posted bus fare against Lonely Planet and other online travel resources before buying tickets.
Tickets and seats acquired, our long travel day continued with a multi-hour bus ride to the coast, followed by a 45-minute boat ride to Cat Ba Island and a 45-minute minibus ride to Cat Ba Town. The boat and van rides were normal, but the bus ride was very aggravating. When the driver wasn’t laying on the horn or blasting Vietnamese variety shows on the TV or driving like an escaped convict, he was picking up packages or Vietnamese passengers from the side of the road. And since all the seats on the bus were full of tourists, the locals sat on tiny plastic stools in the aisle, filling up any remaining space until the bus became a multi-ton fire hazard on wheels. No doubt the money from all the locals bypassed the bus company entirely and went right into the driver’s pocket.
The pinnacle of irritation was that because of all the unscheduled pickups, the bus was running late, which meant no stops for food or water and one completely botched bathroom break. We stopped at a bus depot, where nearly a dozen people (myself included) got off to use the bathroom, but about one minute later the bus started to leave as the attendants yelled at everyone to get back on. One poor woman was in the restroom at the time and the bus actually left and started driving down the road without her. The driver had to pull over and wait for her to get a ride on the back of a motorbike to get back on the bus. Most everyone was pissed at the driver and the company by the time we arrived at the pier to catch the boat.
Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay
The main reason we were going through all this hassle was to get to Cat Ba Town, a small island town that serves as one of the jumping off points for tourists going to Ha Long Bay, the popular home of some of the most beautiful scenery in Asia. Once we were checked into our hotel, we explored the town and the waterfront a bit before booking a full-day tour for the following day.
Early the next morning, we were picked up and taken to our boat, which spent the rest of the day cruising Ha Long Bay and Lan Ha Bay as we admired hundreds of beautiful limestone formations, kayaked, ate a fantastic lunch, swam (or watched others swim), and took lots and lots of photos. It’s not easy to capture the magnitude and beauty of Ha Long Bay in photos, so I’ll include a number of them here in the hopes that enough quantity can somehow add up to quality. The photos aren’t spectacular since the skies were overcast the entire day, but the perpetual clouds meant the temperature was very agreeable and not too hot. Given that we were outside for almost eight hours, I was happy to sacrifice favorable photographic conditions for comfortable weather.
The day after our spectacular outing was a free day, so we did some travel planning, got massages, rented bicycles, and went to one of the local beaches for a bit in the afternoon.
The following day (our last in Cat Ba), we went on a half-day hike through Cat Ba National Park, which essentially meant getting very hot and sweaty as we climbed stairs through the warm, humid jungle. The big payoff was reaching Ngu Lam peak, which offered breathtaking views of green, jungle-covered hills and mountains in every direction. Again, photos won’t do the scene justice, but here they are anyway.
Hanoi
On our last full day in Vietnam, we took the five-hour, minibus-boat-bus-bus combo back to the Hanoi bus station, where we successfully dodged the unscrupulous fast-meter taxi drivers and found a proper taxi company (Mai Linh, the one with the green taxis) to take us to our hotel in the Old Quarter. With only one night in the city, we went out immediately and wandered aimlessly, grabbed beers at a local watering hole, took a pedicab ride around the lake, had snacks in a small restaurant, smoked shisha in a lounge, and had an excellent Indian feast for dinner.
The next morning we made our way to the airport for our flight to Bangkok, again noting the massive difference between Hanoi city traffic (crazy!) and highway traffic (none!).
I can admit that I was ready to leave Vietnam after spending a few weeks there, but I definitely had a great time everywhere we went. For reasons I can’t explain, Vietnam was never on my radar when I was making my Southeast Asia travel plans, but Ayu’s desire to see the limestone islands of the north was enough reason to encourage me to go and I’m really happy I did. We met a lot of very friendly people, had a lot of great coffee and cheap breakfasts, and saw some of the most beautiful nature I’ve seen on my travels.