After a mamouth 24hr solo journey from Hoian to Hanoi I arrived at 6am and got a motorbike ride to the hostel, which was big fun with my backpack still on my back. When I got there I started sounding out trips to Ho Lang Bay and found one for half the price of the one that our hostel ran, which at 60 bucks for three days and two nights seemed pretty good value. After a 3 hour minubus, during which I almost pissed my pants (drive kept telling me it would be 10 minutes until we stopped, 45 minutes later we still hadn't arrived) we got to Ho Lang, which was stunning. Our tour guide was pretty special, for some reason when I asked to go to the toilet the first time he spanked me on the ass! His english was absurdly poor, no one could understand a word he was saying. The weather wasn't on our side and it was very foggy, but the boat was pretty cool, it had sun loungers up top and the rooms were pretty comfortable...
The crowd on our boat weren't exactly party central, there were 3 dutch people around our age who went to bed at 7.30pm. On the first day we sailed to a huge cave which was pretty impressive. For some reason they seem to have a fascination with rocks that look like penises, I get it, but it was an unexpected treat.... After this we went sea kayaking which was pretty good until we noticed the big brown murky patches of sea around the boats, which I can only speculate was poo.
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| My personal favourite |
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| Peel'oooooooo |
We spent the next morning sailing to Cat Ba island, which was a fairly attractive place with a resort and fishing town there... Me and liz went to do a spot of Vietnamese fishing, which basically consisted of a bamboo cane with a loop on the end. You had to hold the reel in your hand! After some disastrous casts the 'captain' (some bloke who had a shit boat that looked like a pedalo with a motor) abandoned the rod so we just dangled a piece of wire into the water. We kept getting biters which felt pretty big, but we couldn't snare them. After about 30 minutes we lost the hook, and as prepared as the guy was, he didn't have any spares. He then fashioned a hook out of a rusty, blunt nail. Needless to say we didn't catch anything but the scenery was pretty amazing. My entire back skin also peeled off for some unknown reason, I think it had just had enough like.
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| Cat Ba island |
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| Can't believe I didn't catch anything |
The girls got absolutely steaming that night, and Laura visited the bathroom a few times during the night! Our ethos was to get smashed so that we could sleep on the 24hr night bus to Laos, which was due to depart from Ha Long Bay the following day. The minibus back to Hanoi was clearly made for Vietnamese midgets, I literally had my chin on my knees for a large period, with the added bonus of a 20 stone Israeli infront of me to crush his chair back a couple of more inches! The following 27.5hrs were interesting to say the least. We were due to catch the night bus at 5.15pm. When the bloke arrived and took us to the road the minubus to take us to the bus station was full. We also noticed a group of english gimps with ridiculous haircuts that we have literally seen everywhere we have been were on there, and I made a comment about the 'haircut douchebags' not realising that the window was open! So we were told that we'd be getting a taxi, which didn't turn up for about an hour, so we just stood on the side of the road panicking, which was nice.
When we got to the bus station everyone else got on a bus whilst we chased after a motorbike that had liz and lou's rucksacks! After the obligatory Vietnamese man trying to scam us out of more money we got on board the bus to find out that we were the only one's on the entire bus! Because we were all hungover and tired and had two seats to ourselves we got a good sleep in. When I woke up the first time there were about 8 locals that had been let on, including a baby that wouldn't stop crying for about 3 hours. The next time I woke up they were loading televisions, dvd players and oil drums on, and I sensed that this was probably beyond the realms of the drivers itinerary.
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| Slightly eerie |
When we got to the border at around 7am no one told us anything, so we walked into the mist towards the border and waited around for about an hour for someone to come and sort our visas. We got back on the bus prepared for another 11hrs of travel. However, at around 4pm, 3hrs ahead of schedule, the bus pulled up and the driver told us that we'd arrived at vang vieng, happy days. Howver, when we got off we were all rather skeptical, as all there appeared to be was a quarry and a dodgy looking food market. We all asked several times if they were sure that it was vang vieng, and the driver even pointed to it on a map and assured us several times that it was the right place. They had already off loaded our packs on to the road and didn't give us an opportunity to check with a local before the bus just drove off. Needless to say the fucking asshole had just dumped us in a tiny little place in the middle of nowhere. Without making any sweeping generalisations, the Vietnamese people are just the worst. In two weeks I met two that I liked, one man that worked in a shop and actually smiled to me, and Vinh the moto driver. The rest were just swindling bastards, who claim to be communists but try and get money out of you at any given opportunity. From start (taxi driver conning us for 25 dollars for a 6km drive from the airport, which he claimed included a 15 dollar toll, likely) to finish (bus journey from hell) we were treated like dirt.
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| Hmmm, where's the tubing at drive?! |
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| Don't let the smile fool you |
So we were stuck there, no taxi's available and no westerners. We found a french family who were passing through in their hire car, and the lady had a cousin there who told us where we were,. It turns out that we were 100km away from vang vieng. Lovely stuff. Our options were limited, and we eventually found out that there was a local bus in a couple of hours which we could catch. The bus arrived and every seat was full, so the 4 of us had to sit on stools in the middle of the aisle, and let me tell you this, they were pretty, pretty, pretty comfortable. Even the Buddhist monks were laughing at us. After it went dark in half an hour we were sat in pitch black sat on those ruddy stools, and finally, after what seemed like an eternity (it had been around 35hrs since we'd left ha long bay), we arrived in Vang Vieng to get our tubing on. We tubed yesterday, I feel broken and almost died but I'll save that for the next post...
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| Cheeky scratch |
After a mamouth 24hr solo journey from Hoian to Hanoi I arrived at 6am and got a motorbike ride to the hostel, which was big fun with my backpack still on my back. When I got there I started sounding out trips to Ho Lang Bay and found one for half the price of the one that our hostel ran, which at 60 bucks for three days and two nights seemed pretty good value. After a 3 hour minubus, during which I almost pissed my pants (drive kept telling me it would be 10 minutes until we stopped, 45 minutes later we still hadn't arrived) we got to Ho Lang, which was stunning. Our tour guide was pretty special, for some reason when I asked to go to the toilet the first time he spanked me on the ass! His english was absurdly poor, no one could understand a word he was saying. The weather wasn't on our side and it was very foggy, but the boat was pretty cool, it had sun loungers up top and the rooms were pretty comfortable... 
The crowd on our boat weren't exactly party central, there were 3 dutch people around our age who went to bed at 7.30pm. On the first day we sailed to a huge cave which was pretty impressive. For some reason they seem to have a fascination with rocks that look like penises, I get it, but it was an unexpected treat.... After this we went sea kayaking which was pretty good until we noticed the big brown murky patches of sea around the boats, which I can only speculate was poo.
The girls got absolutely steaming that night, and Laura visited the bathroom a few times during the night! Our ethos was to get smashed so that we could sleep on the 24hr night bus to Laos, which was due to depart from Ha Long Bay the following day. The minibus back to Hanoi was clearly made for Vietnamese midgets, I literally had my chin on my knees for a large period, with the added bonus of a 20 stone Israeli infront of me to crush his chair back a couple of more inches! The following 27.5hrs were interesting to say the least. We were due to catch the night bus at 5.15pm. When the bloke arrived and took us to the road the minubus to take us to the bus station was full. We also noticed a group of english gimps with ridiculous haircuts that we have literally seen everywhere we have been were on there, and I made a comment about the 'haircut douchebags' not realising that the window was open! So we were told that we'd be getting a taxi, which didn't turn up for about an hour, so we just stood on the side of the road panicking, which was nice.
When we got to the bus station everyone else got on a bus whilst we chased after a motorbike that had liz and lou's rucksacks! After the obligatory Vietnamese man trying to scam us out of more money we got on board the bus to find out that we were the only one's on the entire bus! Because we were all hungover and tired and had two seats to ourselves we got a good sleep in. When I woke up the first time there were about 8 locals that had been let on, including a baby that wouldn't stop crying for about 3 hours. The next time I woke up they were loading televisions, dvd players and oil drums on, and I sensed that this was probably beyond the realms of the drivers itinerary.
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