i'll let out a preemptive "good gad." that about sums up the whole excursion. i will also save the suspense and go ahead and dispense the valuable lesson i've learned over these past few weeks: i don't play well with others. i should have learned from my european vacation of yore that i don't like traveling in "packs." anyhoo...
first things first. booked the halong bay trip through the frat house of a hostel i was staying at with the other 2 ladies from my celta course.
i really really liked both of these girls while we were studying together, and i still like them, even if i haven't talked to them for a while, but i think after the near week of "togetherness" there was sort of a mutual avoidance. i hate that it came to that, but i should have exercised more caution in agreeing to travel with 2 chicks with significantly different traveling agendas than my own. only because i know how i am in these situations. would have been better for all of us if they'd traveled together and i'd traveled...together with myself? i dunno. but it was my own fault. seems to be a pattern in my life though, close quarters leading to less-friendly terms--roommates, traveling buddies, etc...anyhoo, from now on, only traveling alone or with people who have no choice but to like me (close relatives, bound by unconditional love and other bullshit like that).
a note about this particular hostel in hanoi. they have a downstairs bar and a rooftop bar, so drinking is inherently involved. i've stayed in plenty of hostels in the past (europe, japan, the states) and none of them has been as intent on "partying hard" as the one in hanoi has been. which is okay, i guess, but by the end of the week in hanoi, i never wanted to stay in a hostel again. i also had never been so acutely aware of my age. i felt old, or at least extremely "mature." the hostel felt like the setting for the tv show temptation island, where everyone is trying to hook up the whole time. which is okay if that's what you're looking for (this is my attempt at trying to sound less judgmental).
at 8 am on a thursday morning, a group of traveling folk assembled in front of the hostel to embark on our halong bay journey. i believe there were 28 people total, some of whom were along for 2 days, the rest for 3 days (i was one of the latter). we were also introduced to our uber-enthusiastic guide, stacey. he was a brit and he liked to drink. a lot. case in point, by 10 am on the bus, our fearless ringleader had led the bus to consume 2 bottles of vodka and 1 bottle of whiskey. the whole time he was gyrating, shirtless and sweaty, to a shitty techno/pop soundtrack provided by one of the many germans on the bus.
so what do you do when you realize you're stuck in exactly the nightmare you predicted--i.e. you're at a frat party that's out in the middle of nowhere and you have no ride home? that's the question i found myself pondering about 5 minutes into the trip. and i really had no choice but to grin and bear it. i hate doing that. all it does is foster contempt for everyone around me.
so yeah, 3 days of being surrounded by mostly people that you have absolutely nothing in common with sucks balls. i should note here that the people themselves were okay, but again, we just had different agendas. of course i like to drink, but i don't like being forced to party. i didn't know i'd signed up for a booze cruise/singles party (though i had that sinking suspicion as i handed over my money). anyhoo, it was at this point that i thought "i told you so." knowing that i had been right all along did not make me feel better.
eventually we make it to the boat and everything was fine, and the scenery was actually quite beautiful. halong bay itself is pristine--limestone cliffs dramatically jutting out of the water. it was sort of strange though, while we were kayaking through these caves around the cliffs, all i could think about was how similar a lot of it looked to missouri. gots to love that karst topography. i think i even dropped the word "crinoid" but i was the only person interested in missouri's state fossil. go figure. of all the useless, unimpressive information i could retain, i've decided to keep "crinoid" in my brain.
later that night, post-kayaking excursion and swimming amidst rampant jellyfish, ate on the boat and were given keys to our rooms on the boat. that was pretty cool. i'm trying to remember if i've ever slept on a boat before in an actual bed. pretty sure this was the first time. i figured the two chicks i was with would want to room together, as they'd already done lots of bonding in the days prior while i wandered haplessly around hanoi. so i paired up with a scottish nurse named bernie. she was lovely. and that's a word i never use.
most people stayed up late playing drinking games. i went to sleep early-ish. beer on the boat was sort of expensive, (and by expensive i mean $1.50/can. ha.) so i wasn't really too keen on drinking a lot. plenty of other people picked up the slack and got retardedly drunk and naked. it was fun to hear their goings on at 5 am.
got up early for breakfast on the boat. after that the 2 day tourists left, which meant that the young, irish girls were gone, so the germans had to repeat all their mating rituals with the scraps left on the boat for one more day. i think it was actually before noon when someone did the "helicopter" before skinnydipping in the bay. that's not a pleasant thing to see in profile.
we all went kayaking and swimming again. this was actually sort of funny. this fleet of kayaks paddled up to a beach where there was already a boat. we start disembarking and notice that there's one table romantically set for two on the beach. some couple had planned their private getaway on a very public beach. so we just said sorry and raided their romance.
of our group, 2 people had signed up to do the rock climbing part of the package (an extra $40). so we made our way to the little rockclimbing island. this was where i slept in a hammock for approximately 2 hours. that could have been one of the best naps i've ever taken in my life: hammock, island, palm tree, beautiful rock climber bodies to look at should i choose to wake up. which i did. rock climbing looks like something i'll never ever be able to do.
anyhoo, after that we made our way to cat ba island, where we would dine and sleep for the night. my lovely roommate from the night before was one of the 2 day peeps, so i was the odd chick out. ultimately one of the chicks who was hooking up with a german decided to room with him, so i got stuck with her uber-complainy (and totally immodest) friend. good times. cat ba island was actually the highlight though. it was nice to actually interact with some of these partiers during dinner after i'd already judged them so harshly (see, i'm admitting some sort of guilt here. that's a good thing! i'm not too proud to admit i judge too harshly). so that was cool.
after dinner we headed to a karaoke bar. that's where all the good vibes from dinner suddenly disappeared. damn. back to the nightmare. i hated norae bongs in korea, so i still hate them, even in a different country in a different form. but this is where vietnamese rice wine (60% alcohol if you drink the clear shit) came into the picture. yikes. my shot-taking face is not pretty.
after the rice wine the very very attractive rock climbing guide from earlier in the day (with the cool name of onslo) came to the bar. party animal/guide extraordinaire, stacey, decided he would try to physically pour rice wine into this guy's mouth. mr. rock climber man was having none of it. stacey asked him what his problem was, and i believe i chimed in, "dude, his body's a temple." that seemed to be enough to stop stacey and to impress rock climber man. i made small talk with the rock climber man, then he said he had to leave because he was jet-lagged. fair enough.
5 minutes later i noticed that he was still there. i guess i looked sort of bored, so he asked what i thought of the bar. when i described it as "hellish" he invited me to another bar with him. hells yeah! i seem to remember him saying that a girl who looked so bored at a place like that bar was the kind of person he wanted to hang out with. hallelujah!
so he said we could take his bike. i was assuming that a big, strapping man like him meant a motorcycle. but no, he actually meant a small, one speed bicycle. so i hopped on the back and he pedaled me uphill to another bar. i was impressed by this small show of chivalry. funny shit. not sure if it was at this point or later when i returned to that bar that i rode up and down the street on this bicycle while he said goodbyes to people inside. anyhoo, i hadn't ridden a bicycle in a very long time, so it was really fun to zoom up and down these dark streets on a relatively remote island in vietnam.
so we go to the top of this hotel restaurant/bar, and it's just me, him and his two vietnamese friends, sitting on a patio, looking out over the bay/gulf and drinking beers. no karaoke. no rice wine. no music whatsover. but there were rats scurrying around the dark restaurant. and it didn't strike me as gross, it just seemed to add to the understated and perfect atmosphere of the whole place, in sharp contrast to the tackiness of other locales i'd found myself in on this trip.
it was so nice to just banter with another human, or "volley" as he said. he wasn't hitting on me or making me feel uncomfortable, like i've grown accustomed to in asia. sure, he was a hot dude, and i wouldn't have minded one bit if he had been hitting on me, but it was so much better that he wasn't. every once in a while i get to meet people that i have a very natural connection with (again, not talking about romance, though that's been in there before too, on even rarer occassions), and it's nice to be reminded that i can indeed carry on a witty, intelligent conversation with someone i've just met.
oddly enough, the more i travel, the more i realize i have very little in common with most people. so if i can find common ground with someone without having to compromise myself in any way, that's a rare treat. this goes back to my earlier statement that i "don't play well with others." what others may view as fleeting and innocuous conversations carry so much weight to me. the idea that on this planet there are complete strangers who actually are a lot like me. i've lamented before my woeful unrelatability. the times when this well-known [near] fact is contested comprise the very marrow of all my travels. and they are infrequent. and they are these hallowed things to me.
so yeah. the highlight of my trip to halong bay/hanoi for sure. maybe even the highlight of my trip to vietnam (aside from passing the celta, but that feels like ancient history now).
after drinks we walked back to the other bar so i could figure out how to get back to the hotel. and that was it. said goodbyes, shook hands. after that i went nightswimming (partially neked, such a hypocrite!) on an idyllic beach remarkably close to my hotel. there were about 20-30 meters of just sand before you hit any waves. it was absolutely beautiful. a very nice coda to the day and to the trip, aside from the amorous advances of two dudes from the boat. fellas, keep your penises away from me. not interested and/or desperate enough. at least not yet...
next day headed back to halong bay and then back onto the bus. significantly less hard liquor consumed on the way back to hanoi. but the beer was flowing. let's just say that 1 of the girls i was traveling with was downright trashed at 5 in the afternoon.
flew out of hanoi and i was so fucking relieved to be away from that hostel. traveling alone now. went to the mekong delta earlier this week. finally procured a fucking chinese visa (today!!!!!). heading to hanoi (again) in a few hours. once i get there, i'm immediately ushered to the overnight train to sapa, where i'll spend 5 nights/4 days trekking in the mountains/hill country of northern vietnam:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa_Pa
this is what i wanted to do before i was even in this country. so it should be a nice note to leave on, especially since my time here has been very stressful and largely uneventful. thanks for that, chinese embassy.
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