Halong Bay: Day 1

The ride to Halong Bay from Hanoi is about 2 and a half hours. We rode on a bus with the other tourists on our cruise, as well as our tour guide, Binh. Binh was to-the-point, but also charming and funny. He spoke impeccable English. He asked us all to introduce ourselves. There were a pair of Taiwanese sisters and their friend, a mom and her two daughters from Belgium, two young Australian dudes, a solo German guy, and another couple from Switzerland. When it was our turn, I made the mistake of letting everyone know Aaron and I were on honeymoon. From then on, our romance was the butt of every joke, but it was all in good fun. “In Vietnam, we have one of the fastest-growing populations. This is because we eat a lot of warm sweet potato. Maybe a man, he eats sweet potato. It’s warm in his belly. He wakes up in the middle of the night and wants to wake his wife up. Anna, maybe if Ann [everyone calls Aaron “Ann” here] eats too much sweet potato, you tell him slow down,” Binh said, laughing. “I don’t know. They are on honeymoon!” someone called out from the peanut gallery. This continued most of the way to our port of call.

We transferred from our bus to a pontoon, and from our pontoon to a small cruise ship. It had wood panelling and a general 3-star feel, but it was small and comfy enough to seem homey. The air was chilly today, and the bay was foggy. We stood on the deck and watched the hazy, mammoth karsts drift past us. There were no other boats for as far as we could see: nothing but olive green waters and the rocky forms jutting out of it, enveloped in gray. It was like a lost, ancient world. A Jurassic sea monster would not have looked out of place here. I shivered to see the shifting, Stygian shapes. And then, it was time for lunch.

I don’t really remember our first lunch. Every meal on the tour was neither good nor bad, and was remarkable only in the amount and variety of dishes presented. Inevitably there would always be enough leftovers to feed another tour group of the same size. What I do remember, though, is getting acquainted with some of our fellow passengers. Aaron was, at this time, giving a go at being a vegetarian on the trip, so we were sat with the other similarly-diet-restricted travellers. They were genial, intelligent, and well-traveled. We asked them about their plans and where they’d been, and I told them about a certain canal they needed to row down in Ninh Xuan. Both the German and Swiss guy worked in tech, while the Swiss woman was a neuroscientist, so we also had a lot to talk about career-wise. It was a very pleasant conversation, and set the tone for the rest of the trip, when we would get to know all of them a bit better.

Once we were sufficiently fueled, it was time to burn some of those calories. We returned to our pontoon, which dropped us at a dock. The dock was piled with kayaks and oars in bright, primary colors. Each boat could hold two people, so Aaron and I got in a yellow one and started paddling. Binh led the way, but Aaron and I (surprisingly, if you know how lazy I am and weak my upper-body strength is) were able to keep pace. Binh would stop every now and then, to explain how the fishing traps nearby worked or to tell us some trivia about the bay. Eventually, we shored at the gaping entrance to a cave. The cave was small compared to some of the caves we had visited recently, and definitely heavily touristed; it had stairs cut into its inclines and footlights installed along the path. Binh told us it was called “Virgin Cave,” which was kind of an ironic name for a cave that was obviously frequently entered. It led to a deck overlooking a tiny beach. We climbed down to the shore, and spent some time with the sand between our toes. Then, we went back the way we came and returned to our kayak.

We rowed around the large karstic island until we came to a small inlet. Binh told us this area was good for swimming. I was tempted to give it a try, until Binh explained that we would have to haul ourselves back onto our kayaks after. I have only ever tried to get back in a kayak from water once, and I ended up tipping the kayak and being unable to right it. Aaron went for a dip in the chilly waters, though, as did several of the other young men on the tour. There was a lot of “Ooh! It’s cold. It’s really cold!” and the ever-popular “you get used to it after a little bit!”

Our next stop was another cave, this time named “Drum Cave.” This one had a spunky, vocal dog waiting for us on its shore. He seemed wary of us, and kept a sharp eye out. Binh explained that this cave used to host dinner parties, but that local authorities had put the kibosh on that business. It still held several tables and chairs leftover from that time, and the dog was kept here to guard them. Vietnamese people, or at least the ones we met in Hanoi, really seem to have a completely different attitude towards dogs. Everyone we talked to said dogs were for guarding things, and seemed to think it was weird that westerners treated them as companions. Aaron and I were pretty bummed to think about this dog spending every day alone on this island, its only visitors tourists it had been trained to distrust. But, you know, we keep pigs in metal crates so small they can’t turn around, so who am I to judge?

After returning the kayaks and boating back to the cruise, it was happy hour. We went to the topmost deck to enjoy our passion fruit mojitos, and found a group of the others there, already in conversation. Our vegetarian cadre was there, as were the two Australian bros. Australian travellers always remind me of Americans in that they are extraverted, a little bit louder than other tourists, and enjoy drinking. Whenever I travel abroad, I always find myself making friends with an Australian or two. These two were fun and friendly. Everyone there made great drinking companions. None of them, for example, were the kind of people who would make fun of you for spilling an entire passion fruit mojito all over your new pants. Just, you know, as an example. We all bonded over a mutual love of Rick and Morty, which, apparently, has a huge international following.

Before dinner, Binh taught us to roll our own fresh spring rolls. Dinner was as adequate and superfluous as lunch, except now the conversation flowed a bit more easily, having broken the ice over cocktails.

After dinner, we had the night’s entertainment. Like a trickster in a children’s story, Binh had devised three tests for us. Whoever proved themselves worthy would earn their just reward of a free beer. Binh placed a glass beer bottle on the table, then set a 10,000 dong note on top of it, and finished his arrangement with another, identical, upside-down beer bottle on top of all that. Whoever could remove the bill without toppling or touching the beer bottles was the winner. A few tried and failed, then Binh did it easily, to show it could be done. I went next and crushed it, but I’ll never tell how (I googled it). Next, he placed a bill under just one overturned bottle (psh– too easy). Aaron had an insight into this one, but ultimately, it was our Swiss amigo who got the bill out. The trick is to continuously bang on the table. Aaron tried just banging once, hard. The last challenge was simply to drop a coin into a beer mug on the floor: except, instead of using your hands to drop it, you had to use– erm– your butt. Many tried, but in the end, there could only be one champion. And that champion was (drumroll, please)… Aaron! No trick to this one. You just have to be able to drop a coin into a mug using your butt. Some people are the kind of people who can’t do this, and some are the kind that can. Apparently, I married someone in the latter group.

Aaron and I stayed up late with our new boat-friends, drinking and talking and basking in our victories. We knew we were going to have to get up very early the next morning, but that would be another day.