Since I am still trying to catch up after our trip to Ha Long Bay I am going to try and make this quick. I will probably post twice again today. Just in case it gets confusing we were in Ha Long Bay from July 20th -22nd and then left the night of the 22nd to catch our overnight train to Hue. FYi spell checker has not been working for the last 4 posts so just try to ignore all the misspellings.
On Day 2 of the Ha Long Bay trip we got up around 7am again and got showered. We were upstairs for our breakfast at 8am. Seating assignments remained the same and after breakfast we were told to pack up and get ready to check out. We had to transfer to a smaller boat to free up the one we were on to pick up more tourists to sleep on it overnight. It came as a bit of a surprise and I was a little put out at first, since I thought we would have a place to store our stuff till we got to the hotel, but it ended up working out ok I guess.
By 9:15 we were on the smaller boat headed for Cat Ba Island to do some mountain biking. While we were on the way I asked Lucky for the day's itinerary, which I assumed would be as hurried as the day before. It was, but luckily the activities were a little more fun and there were a lot less boats around. He said we would be biking, kayaking and swimming and then at 5pm we would go to the hotel. At that point he let Chris and I know that we would be in a different hotel than the others. We had kind of picked up that everyone else had paid less than us for the trip and at first we thought we got ripped off, but once he told us we had a different place to stay we realized it might be because we had a better hotel (btw it was, our hotel kicked the other hotels ass). Once we got to the island we all picked a bike. As I was testing the breaks and seat Lucky told us not to change gears since most of the bikes did not work. Once everyone had a bike we set out for the 6km ride. My bike sucked. I could not change gears manual, but it had no problem shifting on its own. It constantly slipped in and out of gear as I went up hill and made it impossible to ride so I spent a good amount of time walking up hills. We road through a small village and got to the end of town where there was a lady set up selling drinks... of course. After a quick break we went on a little trek through the jungle to a bat cave. It was not that great, but we did see some huge spiders and the biggest guy on the tour cried like a big baby when we walked through the cave of bats.
Back at the bikes we started the ride back. My bike still sucked, but I figured if I road fast I could manage to get up hills. Unfortunately I pushed it too hard and about half way back the chain just fell right off the the bike. I tried to fix it, but had no luck so I was stuck walking it up hill and then riding it down for a good 1.5km. It sucked and it was hot. About half way up the biggest hill a guy stopped on his motorbike and offered me the bike on the back of his. I thought he was going to charge me so I said no at first. Eventually I gave in and took it once we agreed it was free. It was a 1950's style bike, straight out of the wonder years with a basket and a bell. It was the best bike I had ridden yet and I flew back to the docks ringing my bell all the way. Once we got back to the dock everyone boarded and we got served lunch on the way to our next stop.
After lunch it was time to Kayak. I swear every activity was scheduled for 1.5 hrs, which pissed me off because the whole reason we took the expensive trip was to get to kayak around the bay. Anyway we got in the boats and kayaked to a small cove that you had to enter through an under cut rock. It was pretty cool looking and I wish we could have spent more than 15 min there, but that was all we had scheduled. Chris and I rowed like champs pretty much the whole time. Actually I don't want to brag, but we kicked everyone elses ass and it would have been a lot of fun to have more time to kayak around on our own. After everyone else was back on the big boat we cruised over to a place called Monkey Island. Lucky said he had not seen any monkeys in weeks and we should not expect to see any. We had an hour and a half to swim.. of course and lucky for us the monkeys did come down after we got there. They did not do much, but at least we got to see them.
Around 4:30pm it was back on the boat and then on to the hotels. I am not sure how it happened, but the driver only made one stop at the crap hotel everyone else was staying at so Chris and I had to wait outside for our hotel to come get us. The guy showed up in an SUV and we climbed in after about a 15 min wait and we drove about 2 min down the road. The good news is the wait was worth it. We were in a place called the Sunrise Resort that sat right on the beach and had a pool. It basically looked like a smaller, cheaper version of Cabo, but after the days we had been having it looked like heaven. We got a free drink at check in, coupons for our meals and wrist bands so that we could go to the pool and use the other facilities. The pool looked pretty good so we quickly dropped our stuff in the room and made our way out to it. We spent a good 40 min or so just floating around reflecting on the tour and how this was the relaxing feeling we were supposed to get from Koh Samui (which if you will remember was a total bust). In the end we figured we did get the shaft a bit. Yeah our hotel was much nicer, but I think our whole trip was supposed to be a lot nicer and was supposed to have more free time for us to do stuff. It worked out ok in the end, but we basically got an 80 dollar tour for 140 bucks. After sitting in the pool we showered and went to dinner. Dinner was good and being the fancy boys we are we ordered wine with our meal. I know it is a little gay, but we were enjoying our time there and were going to get the most we could out of it. After dinner we walked back down to town to look for the others. I don't know why really; we had a much nicer place and none of them really talked to us anyway. We got down there pretty quick and dropped in to a place called the Green Mango for a drink. No one stopped by, even though we saw a few people, so we finished our beers and started the walk back. Not in the mood to walk we grabbed motorcycle taxis. It cost like 1.50 usd and got us there in about 2 min. We even got proposition for the "boom boom,' but we said no. It was back to the room at that point and we settled in by 11pm. It had been a long two days and would be another early morning so we fell asleep as quickly as we could.
Up at 6:30... well more like 7am and got packed. We made our way back down to meet the others. I am not sure how it happened, but we paid more and we were expected to get ourselves back to the hotel to meet everyone else. We got on the bus and then boarded the boat to ride back to the harbor. We ended up getting back to the main harbor and had to sit around for over an hour waiting for the bus. It really was a fitting end to the trip. While parts had been fun and Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island were really cool, the coordination and treatment on the trip really had not been that great. You really felt rushed the whole time and on the flip side felt like you wasted a lot of time waiting around for the logistics to work out. Anyway we were on the bus around 1:00pm and after a quick lunch made the 3 hour trip back to Hanoi.
We arrived at the hostel around 6pm and checked email and stuff. We ate dinner there and then walked around till we left for our train.
