My adventure tours outside of Hanoi

From day 3 to day 4, I was at Halong Bay, south east of Hanoi. And on day 5, I took a day trip out to the Perfume Pagoda, south west of Hanoi.

Day 3

Our tour guide in Halong Bay was a young 27-year-old Vietnamese man, whose English had to be constantly translated from Vietnamese English to an English that I could understand. That was definitely a frustration that I had with being in a country where I did not speak the language. The experience just isn't as enriching when you can't ask questions and talk to the people who live there.

While we were waiting at the ferry terminal on the way to Halong, the rain was torrential. To get onto our boat, we had to literally walked the plank. The boat people extended a thin wooden plank about 20 cm wide out onto the dock, and the 45 degree angle of the plank somehow seemed much worse in the rain. To help steady the people getting on, the boat people made a makeshift railing by having two guys hold a thin bamboo pole on either side. When everyone finally got onto the boat, they informed us that we had to climb over several more boats to get to the one that we were actually on. So people with big back packs, unfit people, older folks, all of us scrambled over the rails of 4 different boats, after which we finally got to our destination. Overall, it was a very hazardous slip-and-slide experience.

Our first destination after lunch was the Surprise cave. Our young tour guide was trying to tell us about why the cave was named as such. He said, one of the possible opinions is that explorers came to the cave, and were so... surprised... by its beauty. Hence the name. As my group walked through the huge cave, I scanned the cave. Lo and behold, on a high wall above me, was a portruding rock shaped like a "perfect penis" (as one of the Polish girls said) and bathed in a glow of red light. The guide, interestingly, didn't point this out to us, but instead chose to direct our attention towards less interesting rock formations shaped like elephants, dragons, lions and turtles. I was so... surprised... by the number of animal formations at this cave, so I asked the guide if these were formed by natural forces. He smiled at me and said, "It is whatever you want it to be." Our tour guide concluded the tour by summing up all the rock formations we saw, and asked us, "Were you surprised?"

Later on, our boat anchored in an area surrounded by these huge limestone formations. They came by and herded us like sheep, telling us, "Swim time." These 4 crazy Danish guys who'd already been on the tour once the week before exclaimed, "SWIM TIME??? Can we jump?" When the boat people nodded their heads. And within 10 seconds, all 4 of them had lost their shirts, gave war cries with great gusto, and jumped off the top deck (about two stories high) and into the oil slicked water speckled with bits of trash. Right as they were jumping, one of the boat people muttered, "Actually, I don't know how shallow the water is..." And the group of us that heard this ran to the railing and looked over. Thankfully, all of them surfaced. I yelled to them from below, "Is the water warm??" All of them nodded emphatically, and motioned for the rest of us to jump over. One of the older European ladies on the boat looked at me and said, "Don't believe them. They're Danish." Referring of course, to the cold climate in Denmark.

After much persuasion, along with my French roommate, I jumped into the oil slicked water speckled with bits of trash. Pleasant. The water was actually, surprisingly, warm. After swimming for a grand total of 10 minutes, we realized that we couldn't last too long. So, Elodie and I decided to take a kayak and kayak around a big limestone monolith. We figured it would occupy the rest of the 30 minutes that we had of swim/kayak time. However, the further we paddled around this limestone, the bigger we realized this "monolith" was. We tried to be heroes and kept going. After about 20 minutes of kayaking, we realized that it just wasn't going to happen. Elodie started wondering if the inhabits of the floating fishing villages would take us in, should our boat leave us at Halong Bay. Then she started telling me the legend of Halong bay, and we started wondering what lay beneath its murky waters. I said, whatever we do, don't capsize. And of course, I almost jinxed it, because the next moment, we almost flipped ourselves over out of pure fear.

At that moment, we realized that we really should just turn around. We started furiously paddling. Actually, specifically, I started furiously paddling, because Elodie was really tired. And anyway, she didn't really understand my English. Especially when I yelled out "keep rowing", she would stop and ask me for clarification. I gave up and instead kept my energy to row us both back. We were more than 30 minutes later than we expected, and found out that the boat had almost left us. However, the 4 Danish guys had noticed us leave and told the boat people that we were still missing.

After dinner, the two Polish girls, two Irish girls, Elodie and I, decided to head out to the deck. The sky was absolutely clear, and we stayed and admired the galaxy. Elodie and I even saw shooting stars. Que romantica. Elodie and I wanted to sleep under the stars, so we brought all our stuff up to the deck. However, our magical night ended a few hours later, when the clouds formed again, and rain started gently pattering on our skins.

Day 4

The next day was rather uneventful, as the boat took people back to the ferry terminal to catch the bus back to Hanoi. The weather was nice though, and I got to admire the landscape. It was like valium for the senses. Well, except for Jeff the Republican, who was absolutely fascinated by every single story that HE was telling me, and wouldn't stop yabbering all the way back.

That night, I took my first cyclo ride in in Hanoi. The cyclo is like a trishaw, except that the bicycle is at the back, and pushing the passenger forward. Getting a ride in a cyclo is like having court side seats at the Pistons game. I was in the middle of all the action, and could feel my heart racing as I saw motorcycles and vehicles coming at me from left right and centre.

Day 5

I woke up bright and early to get ready for my trip to the Perfume Pagoda. I slept most of the bus ride because I was so tired from listening to motorcycles honking all night. In order to get to the pagoda, my tour group for that day took an hour boat ride down a river. The rower was a young Vietnamese lady who must've had superhero powers, because she was rowing 4 adults for a very long time. Thinking about myself rowing the kayak, and comparing with her, I felt quite pathetic.

In my rowing boat was an Australian couple, an Israeli guy (Ooohh-weiii), and myself. In the next boat was an Australian couple and an extremely weird Japanese man. Apparently, the Japanese man kept standing up in the middle of the boat whenever he felt like it. And because the boat wasn't very stable, i think there was concern of capsizing. Also, I heard that he also tried to take a monk's lunch when he was near the pagoda.

At the end of our rowing trip, we had to take an hour hike to get up to Perfume Pagoda. The Australian couple, the Israeli guy, and myself, decided to trek. The rest of them took a cable car. Our guide decided to abandon us and take the cable car as well, so he said a perfunctory goodbye, and vaguely pointed us in the direction of the trail. I thought I was fit, but the hike kicked my ass. After 20 minutes, I was pretty pooped. The Australian couple powered on though, and so the Israeli guy and I fought to keep up.

The Pagoda itself wasn't very impressive. As we descended down a long flight of steps, we walked into a yawning cave that was shaped like a dragon's mouth (that's what our guide told us). The shrine was very smoky and heavy with the smell of joss sticks and incense. Maybe that's why it's called the Perfume Pagoda. At the centre of this very sacred shrine were three statues lit up in psychedelic lights. I didn't want to be rude, and I'm not sure how traditional and holy 70s disco lights are, but I guess whatever works for the pilgrims and tourists...

On the journey to Perfume Pagoda, I observed that it was largely the women who worked, rowed boats, prepared food. On the other hand, the men were relaxing and playing cards, or simply wandering around aimlessly. Someone I met on the plane surmised that perhaps this was the 30- to 40-something group that went to war, and because men were never expected to return, women became in charge of the household. I don't think it's true for the new generation of Vietnamese, but maybe it is true for the older generations.

Day 6

The rest of the trip was uneventful too. I bought myself a nice oil painting for my new apartment in NY, but that was about it. My taxi driver on the way to the airport was rocking out to Venga boys. It was like a disco in the cab. I received a call on the way, and requested for him to turn down the volume. I felt sooooo bad when I saw how crestfallen he looked. But after the phone call, we resumed our rock-out session.

The End