First in-country travel...complete!
We just returned to Hanoi for a few hours following our first in-country trip to Halong Bay (Vinh Ha Long), where we stayed overnight on Cat Ba island. Beautiful limestone caves on the island and hundreds of limestone sea stacks/islands dotted the water - very dramatic scenery during the boat ride to get there. At 10:00 tonight, we depart via overnight train to Da Nang /Hoi An where the tailors are plentiful and there are many historic preserved buildings - part of a UNESCO Heritage site.
The benzene fumes from our boat made me a bit ill, as anyone who has traveled to SE Asia can attest to the overwhelming fumes from that fuel. As a result, this past day my diet consisted of rice, Sprite, and Cheese-flavored Pringles (the ULTIMATE comfort food when ill overseas). Which begs the question of why Pringles can be found everywhere...clearly Proctor & Gamble has built a formidable worldwide distribution network. If/when we land on Mars, I'm sure Pringles will be close behind. Michelle, on the other hand, ate like a local - and had grilled squid for three meals in a row. And on the boat ride back from Cat Ba, a local fishing boat pulled up alongside, and from it she bought some shrimp-like crustaceans. Our boat crew grilled them for her - very tasty, she reports, for a 9:30 a.m. meal.
The trip to Cat Ba took 6 hours each way - 3 hours of bus from Hanoi to Halong City harbor, then the boat ride took another 3 hours. Loooooong day. What made it longer was the "rest stop" half-way thru the bus ride, because as the guide told us "It's a very long trip". The rest stop lasted for 30 minutes at a shop (really a dusty side of the road with a warehouse building) where you could (shock!) buy souvenirs at exorbitant prices. Even the drinks/ice cream were priced at about 100% markup. Several mini-buses were at each rest stop each time we stopped, with mostly Euro and Aussie travelers - one arrived about every 5-10 minutes.
Given the high prices, few people bought anything which made the 30 minutes pass very slowly. When we pulled into each stop, we became instantly jealous of the people already there - because we knew they'd leave sooner than we would. On the flip side, as we sat there waiting for the 30 minutes to pass and saw an incoming bus, our spirits lifted as we realized we were closer to leaving and they would have to stay longer. You could see in the eyes of the people on each newly-arriving bus that they had the same sinking feeling that you had 15 minutes earlier when your bus pulled in - sort of a vacant zombie stare coated with envy coupled with fatigue for Vietnamese tchotchkes sales tactics.
The benzene fumes from our boat made me a bit ill, as anyone who has traveled to SE Asia can attest to the overwhelming fumes from that fuel. As a result, this past day my diet consisted of rice, Sprite, and Cheese-flavored Pringles (the ULTIMATE comfort food when ill overseas). Which begs the question of why Pringles can be found everywhere...clearly Proctor & Gamble has built a formidable worldwide distribution network. If/when we land on Mars, I'm sure Pringles will be close behind. Michelle, on the other hand, ate like a local - and had grilled squid for three meals in a row. And on the boat ride back from Cat Ba, a local fishing boat pulled up alongside, and from it she bought some shrimp-like crustaceans. Our boat crew grilled them for her - very tasty, she reports, for a 9:30 a.m. meal.
The trip to Cat Ba took 6 hours each way - 3 hours of bus from Hanoi to Halong City harbor, then the boat ride took another 3 hours. Loooooong day. What made it longer was the "rest stop" half-way thru the bus ride, because as the guide told us "It's a very long trip". The rest stop lasted for 30 minutes at a shop (really a dusty side of the road with a warehouse building) where you could (shock!) buy souvenirs at exorbitant prices. Even the drinks/ice cream were priced at about 100% markup. Several mini-buses were at each rest stop each time we stopped, with mostly Euro and Aussie travelers - one arrived about every 5-10 minutes.
Given the high prices, few people bought anything which made the 30 minutes pass very slowly. When we pulled into each stop, we became instantly jealous of the people already there - because we knew they'd leave sooner than we would. On the flip side, as we sat there waiting for the 30 minutes to pass and saw an incoming bus, our spirits lifted as we realized we were closer to leaving and they would have to stay longer. You could see in the eyes of the people on each newly-arriving bus that they had the same sinking feeling that you had 15 minutes earlier when your bus pulled in - sort of a vacant zombie stare coated with envy coupled with fatigue for Vietnamese tchotchkes sales tactics.
posted by ToddV at
4:59 PM
