Day 4, Halong Bay
Have fallen a few days behind as it’s not easy typing on the bus, not quite being built for us larger western types. Am writing this on the road from Hue to China Beach (nowadays called Da Nang Beach). We’ve passed a few war graves on the road.
A couple of days ago we were in Halong Bay, the pristine wilderness, World Heritage listed etc place. Looks fabulous, lots of dragon teeth peaks rising out of the ocean. Had a fantastic seafood lunch, with a local baked clam as a favourite. Took t Worked it off in the afternoon with an hour or so kayaking with L around the Bay, through a couple of small caves, Kayaking was great but hard work, lots of upper arm stamina required and a little sore in the leg from bracing. Got some pics that hopefully turned out, and was a lot of fun and quite a beautiful way to spend the afternoon. Finished off with a quick swim in the bay, just around the boat. I didn’t stray far from the boat’s ladder as I’m not much of a swimmer, but am happy to say I gave it a go.
Shower facilities on the boat were somewhat rudimentary, but the water was hot so no complaints. Then back up on deck for a few beers before dinner. I’ve been drinking a fair bit of beer here, it’s cheaper than water, and is generally okay if a little bloating. The local wine is overpriced for what it is, there’s one called Dalat that’s cut with mulberry and it’s not unpleasant, just watery with no finish to speak of. There is some locally produced rice vodka, one comes in a bottle with a blue label and is called Hanoi vodka I think, it’s fairly smooth, white spirity, but suffers from never being chilled. There’s also rice “wine”, which I think is just the rice vodka dialled up a notch, to somewhere in the 65% mark, and is generally only good for sterilising. It’s also not chilled. Also bought a bottle of some other type of rice vodka, thought it was the rice wine as I didn’t notice the word vodka in a weird font on the label. Cost 65000 dong, so maybe $3.50 for 500mL. Tasted wildly of nuts, like amaretto or frangelico but without any refinement or sweetness. So maybe meths with hazelnut essence. Been there, tried it, won’t lament the purchase but no need to go back there.
Halong Bay dinner was lovely (we’re back to normal programming here). Lots of seafood, baked oysters that were fabulous, crispy barbecued prawns that were cooked so it was possible to eat all of it, even the head. There’s some saying about the meal not being over until after the rice course comes out, so the other food up to then is just the entree really. Weirdly, the rice courses we’ve had have generally been the least impressive, fairly bland meet dishes lacking the fresh punch and flavours of the previous. Hitting the rice dish has generally been anticlimactic.
After dinner it was decided that we needed to do a round of tequila shots (I think this was due to L and another traveller talking about the dipping paste of lime, salt and pepper. Being no fan of tequila, but willing to do my bit for national pride, I went the Hanoi vodka shot. The boat had no shot glasses so we were given hand measured pours in small brandy balloons. Fairly smooth, not the world’s finest but drinks okay.
Guide showed us a short video of two Canadians being idiots in Vietnam, drinking snake blood, stopping traffic, generally acting like complete arses. I think the guide thought it was hood but the group were all wondering wtf. This was followed by some beautiful footage of Halong bay with the world’s most inane voice-over. I had to get out, around about the time the announcer started talking about there being millions of elements in the universe, and the water and stone being two of these…
Relaxed on top of the boat for a little while, remarking about the pristine wilderness while being surrounded by about a hundred similar boats.
Did I forget to mention how busy Halong Bay actually is? While kayaking we had to avoid a couple of speed boats, and when paddling around a lovely inlet there were a boat of other tourists being driven around. Was funny, looking at our group of generally sweaty caucasians, that to the other tourists we probably looked like we were the extreme adventurers. As the afternoon went on, more and more boats arrived, there must have been at least 50 just in our area. As one of our group noted, it’s good that we’re here now and not in 10 years time, as the place will probably be totally trashed by then, world heritage listed or not.
Halong Bay is beautiful, but I do worry about how it will be managed to preserve it for future generations.