Again, no sleep. Animals were having a party. Egg for breakfast again. Today we went on a walk and met with some different people from another tour. The Austrians had been really annoyed because they had booked a motorbike tour and were shown a video of the chop stick factory and swimming in a lake etc but on the first day we just did the bicycle ride and looked around the markets- no sign of a motorbike tour, chopstick factory or swimming in a lake. Therefore, they thought they had been conned. (Very common in Vietnam, unfortunately!)
However we found out yesterday that they were on the right tour, but no-one had told them what was going on! My house mate and I hadn’t known when we came to do the tour that it included the factory visit or motorbikes… lucky I enjoyed the motorbike ride!
So anyway, today the Austrians went off on the motorbikes and went swimming in the lake and we met some new people on our tour, who were really friendly, one American and two Hungarians.
I was talking with the American guy and he was saying how he suspects some of the “nicer” houses in the area have been built for “show” and are not actually lived in, it’s just to make the area look nicer. Another conspiracy theory is that at one point it was thought Hanoi was going to expand all the way to Halong bay in the North, and so the houses were built because the Government expected people to move in, but then the expansion never happened. All just theory… but then the houses did have huge, carved wood front doors and all painted nice colours but didn’t look occupied…
We had to walk up 1,300 steps to some caves and they were pretty steep. I knew I wasn’t the fittest of people, but I found this REALLY hard, to the point where I was shaking and felt like I was going to pass out. I’ve done a lot of walking with my family (my dad often dragged us off on family walking holidays up large mountains) but this was something else! Maybe I was dehydrated… the heat really is intense and it’s not even summer yet! (February 2013).
I wasn’t used to strenuous exercise in heat like that. Another man was struggling too, and when he asked the tour guide how much further it was he was told we were half way. Half way?!?! I literally couldn’t do it, and I know I couldn’t because when I sat down I didn’t feel guilty, or disappointed with myself for not trying, I felt relieved. So I sat waiting for the others to come back, and watched the view. It was a good view and was really nice to be in the peace and quiet of the countryside. The other man was sat a bit higher up than me, and was waiting too. Then the guide came back and got the man to go to the top “for his wife” who had gone on ahead and clearly wasn’t impressed!
So I decided I was going to have to go up! I got round the corner and there we were, at the top. If the guide had told me how close I was, and not said that I was only half way, I would have been fine!! So I felt a bit silly. The caves were nice and cool and I got a picture from the top. At the bottom we stopped for a drink on the side of the road and chatted away, it was really nice being around like-minded people.
When we got back we had a three hour wait for the others to return before we could get back on the mini bus- but seen as we were in the middle of a beautiful paradise this was actually quite nice, we just sat and chatted on the balcony of the dorms and admired the view! (I didn’t have a dorm but a friend one of my new friends had a “deluxe” cabin with a nice view of the mountains)! The journey back was about 4 hours and we stopped off for coconut ice cream with real coconut pieces in it, which was lovely. The perfect end to the perfect weekend away!
It was a great three days and the next day I was off to visit the school I was going to be teaching at…. busy, busy!
