Apparently, if you felt you had an unlucky month you can eat dog on the last sunday of that month so you can have good luck the following month. i've eaten cow brains and fried earthworms but, call me crazy, i won't eat dog. it's a good thing i'm generally a lucky person!
sorry, this key board is strange and trying to use the shift key to make uppercase letters is only slowing me down. no caps today.
so, halong bay. after a 4 hour drive from hanoi, through rice fields with workers wearing conical hats and water buffalo, the tour bus arrived at halong city to board the boat to the bay. i had a 3 day/2night tour and the first night was on a boat called the poseidon sails. the boat was beautiful and my room had nice big windows with quite the view. it was just low enough to the water so that i could reach out my window to buy a cold beer from one of the ladies selling goods from her little boat. there were about 12 people on the tour - a mix of british, vietnamese-american, malaysian, swiss and a local couple from hanoi. once on board we were served lunch and i ended up sitting with the british girls and getting to know them for most the evening. they are teaching english in hong kong for a year and came out to halong bay for a quick weekend. i would love to do that someday.
our first stop was at a very large cave called sung sot cave (suprising cave). i read all about this cave and how its a very popular stop for tourists on halong bay cruises. it was completely massive, but all the stalactites/mites were "dead". so many people had been in the cave that their formation has completely ceased. so yes, it was suprising at how insanely huge the cave was but the real suprise came when our guide led us to the cave at the very end and yelled "suprise!!" and there in the middle of the cave was a massive formation of what looked like a man's penis! ha! there was even a red spotlight on it so it was very noticeable.
after the cave stop we got to kayak around for awhile- it was cool but there were so many boats and tourists that it didn't feel very serene. I got a 2-person kayak to myself and out-paddled most the other people just trying to figure out how to steer - yes i'm bragging. The rest of the night was spent swimming off the boat, eating dinner and singing karaoke. nothing crazy, but it was a good time.
The following day everyone except the 2 swiss girl and i went back to hanoi. so the 3 of us got off on the large island of Cat Ba with a ton of other tourists. our guide brought us to cat ba national park (with all the other tourists) where we did a hike to the summit. took about an hour to get to the top and i out-hiked everyone. yes-i'm braggin again. i attribute it to my massive lung capacity from living at 8000 feet and now only being at sea level. anyway, it was a good thing i got there first cuz the view was amazing and it was only ruined by the nearly 50 people that arrived shortly after. there wasnt any sort of platform on top - just a little area with a bunch of rocks so once everyone started to come up it got ridiculously crowded. to get down was to squeeze past a ton of people trying to get up on this pretty technical path.
the 2 swiss girls (angela and sabrina) and i checked into a hotel on the island and it sort of sucked. i won't go into details but i wish i would have only done the 2day/1 night on the boat tour. we had lunch, dinner and breakfast included in the hotel cafeteria where there were a group of vietnamese men getting drunk. one of them snapped a photo of angelas chest. she said she was really tired of men here staring at her chest cuz it's pretty big compared to asian women. lucky for me i don't have that problem! That and i'm taking care to cover up a bit more.
Back in hanoi i had just a few hours left to enjoy the city before heading to my next destination. there are all the makeshift sidewalk eateries with little plastic step stools to sit on and tiny plastic tables to eat on. it's amazing to see the streets filled with business men and women squatting down at these tiny tables with nice suits on slurping their food and practically sitting on the floor. so i had to try it. it took me a lot of courage cuz i'm on my own and feel a little intimidated but i squeezed in and ordered a delicious meal and a beer for only $2.50! after my meal, i took in a water puppet show which was really fun! nothing is made for the western size though. the theater seats were tiny with no leg room, the bus to halong bay had no leg room, the regular clothes here are tiny. i could go on and on. i'm such giant here.
tuesday morning i got on a flight to luang prabang, laos. i'll start a new posting for that...
No comments:
Post a Comment