Day 86 - Ha Long Bay
If you're in Northern Vietnam then you certainly have to or at least ought to or possibly shouldn't visit Ha Long Bay. With this sort of conviction Rory (my Dutch friend from the Ha Giang Loop) and I find ourselves on a minibus to the bay and our path unavoidably intersecting with *shudder* a tour. The bus driver has a drop-off itinerary for the passengers and virtually no English. We stop to let off some other passengers and, noticing that we're only six minutes walk from our own hostel, we hop out. But the bus driver knows that this isn't our scheduled stop and enthusiastically waves us back onboard. Well alright we could get a bit closer and save our legs so we comply. My spidey sense is tingling though. And reader, sometimes you must trust these instincts when travelling. Because the driver then drives us back in the opposite direction with any logical hopes of looping back to our hostel rapidly diminishing. We end up miles away and on the phone to the driver's boss who explains that there is now no time to take us back and could we just get a taxi? I'm beginning to hate the buses. The endless circling to fill them beyond capacity, the shouting drivers, the English-less drivers, the drivers that shout *because* they are English-less (the English would never do this), the innumerable, avoidable fuck-ups. Yeah this does all sound a bit entitled I grant and to anyone else if I was trying to sell the idea of travel I would say it's "all part of the fun!" but in such quantities it does wear a little. The idea of having my own wheels is becoming more and more appealing. The bus driver fly-tips us outside a café with a 'c'est la vie' smile that could incite me to violence. The café, as luck would have it, sells lunch and tours. But then most places in Southeast Asia sell X and tours where 'X' is any product. X could be lunch, X could be accommodation, X could be X. There's myriad tour options for Ha Long Bay in glossy brochures and on floating palaces way beyond the means of scruffy backpackers, I close the brochures as quickly as the café owner opens them. After a while the unspoken poverty is noted and we find a one day tour for tens of dollars rather than hundreds. My expectations are low. I know I am signing up for an experience so generic, so over-subscribed and so well-trodden that even the waters of the bay have grooves carved into them by the ceaseless traffic. But this knowledge avoids the inevitable disappointment of hoping for more. Or, rather, less. Less (fewer) people, less development, less commercialisation. I'm here because I'm here and so I can say I went. The tourist trail is proving harder to avoid than I had hoped.
Ha Long Town has that Sharm el-Sheikh feel about it. Bland development seeps outward from the water's edge like a rising tide that never recedes. There is a ferris wheel on a hill dominating the skyline and the cable cars required to get people up to it score the blue sky with black lines. There's a rollercoaster too. It all blights the natural beauty that brought people here in the first place. But too few will feel that way. They may come for the limestone pillars but they stay for the amenities and facilities of which those pillars are just one. Have you really thrown a plastic bottle into the sea until you've thrown a plastic bottle into the sea in Ha Long Bay? I temper my cynicism out loud to avoid seeming a cynic and so as not to dull Rory's generally positive demeanor. Before the tour we decide to spend a couple of days on Cat Ba which is a large island in the bay. As well as lunch, and the tour the café also rented us a couple of bikes that had seen better days. We park them up on the ferry that will take us to the island and as it putters out into the bay I begin to feel more optimistic. The waters are quiet as we pass the rainforest-topped limestone formations. Perhaps this place isn't as overcrowded as I feared? Maybe it is off-season and we've timed it well? As we turn into a large bay ringed by islets the triumph of hope over expectation is laid as bare as the rough sides of the pillars. We enter a floating car park full of ferries and cruise ships and pleasure craft.
This is the cue for the tourists next to us to start arranging themselves for a group shot. Unwilling to miss out on being in the beautiful scene of mass tourism the boss lady as we'll call her, all dustbin-lid sunglasses and bird-of-prey nails, hands me the camera. Four red talons are held up to indicate the required number of pictures. The group poses for three before it gets bored and begins to break up. Somehow boss lady holds me responsible for this. Growing up on a remote island with terrible food and worse weather has rendered me a squat, pasty, dark-to-no-haired troglodyte. Rory however is tall and blond and with eyes bluer than my passport. And infinitely more appealing to people from parts of Asia. So while I am the hired help behind the camera he is dragged into the frame with some of the young women in the group. They smile and pose and tussle to place each other's hands on his thigh which casts an awkward pall over the whole thing.
Freed, wind in our hair, on smooth and straight tarmac under a benevolent sun giving the fields a tropical shade of green. White butterflies dance across the road, twirling and corkscrewing and, I guess, screwing. A sight of simple wonder only marred by the fact that they were doing this at head height and I was going at around 40mph. Their delicate bodies felt more substantial as they pinged off my face and chest and into crumpled heaps on the road. Beauty and horror were ever sides of the same coin. The hostel we checked into was a slick affair in the north of the island with lifts and keycards and a swimming pool and cleaners. The tourist trail flows through Cat Ba too. A point reinforced by the ubiquitous open-sided tourist bus/cart/taxis that transport, and I'd like to be general but fact dictates specificity, Chinese tourists about certain places. We watched them ply back and forth between beach and sight and hotel as we walked along the main drag. The following day we hit the beach ourselves to get our slice of sun, sea and sand. And slice was apt as the high cliffs behind us blocked the sun and cast a shadow over one quarter of the beach. The not-insignificant numbers of Chinese tourists were all clustered in this quarter like someone had fucked up the venue for a vampire convention. I'm not saying Chinese tourists are vampires, it's a metaphor. As the sun moved through the sky (not astronomically correct, don't write in) their territory slowly expanded. There is a race on. Will the sun's lethargic downwards arc plunge us into shadow before the light of understanding floods my brain? Because Rory is trying to explain Instagram stories and highlights to me. If I wasn't old before now, if I wasn't old when I started thinking tweed was a solid sartorial choice, if I wasn't old when I started making noises when sitting or standing then I am old now. Tech has always been my métier (that and obscure words) and I took an understanding of it, in-built and intuitive, as a constant. But now as Rory explains again with infinite patience I can see that I am as doomed as the rest to accidentally delete everything with a single swipe and to embrace racism with a single view. PC Load Letter and "didn't thing used to be better?". We ride to a sunset viewpoint for the evening and another shared sunset strikeout for me. The journey back to the hostel is enlivened by an impromptu race with two locals. Under mood street lighting they veer their bike pointedly into my path every time I try to pass, toying with grinning competence. I make it a rule never to combine drinking and driving and impromptu street races (pick two, any two) so I resist the testosterotemptation to force the overtake. Age brings you closer to death and yet steers you away from it. For dinner we walked to a waterfront section of the town lined with seafood restaurants. Dozens of plastic tables and chairs were arranged along the seawall and were mostly unoccupied. We picked a restaurant and indicated we'd like to sit next to the water rather than back on the road. Not possible we are told, only the empty tables on the road were available not the empty tables by the water. Curious but there's plenty more restaurants so we walk on. The next place refuses our request too. And the next. There's a lot of restaurants here and not a lot of patrons so in a seller's market this refusal to give us what we want seems like bad business sense. A couple more attempts and we find a place that will fulfill our regal request. And lo it seems these people know their business better than I do because within half an hour the tourist carts turn up and drop off the Chinese in significant numbers. Soon the whole waterfront is full and having a couple of thrifty western backpackers at a table for six rather than a flush Chinese family does indeed seem not worth it. It was an enlightening view of the powershift within the tourism industry. We westerners are not the cash cows anymore and the market will turn and will adapt to the needs of those that are. The Chinese are driving market forces, what would Mao say?
After a day or so of Cat Ba we returned to the mainland and do the tour. There's little to say about it, my expectations were met. It was beauty on rails. Ha Long Bay is beautiful, just look at the pictures! No, **just** look at the pictures don't actually go. But if you go to Northern Vietnam you *will* likely go and if you don't, you won't. It's like me saying that Bondi Beach is overrated (it is) or the Taj Mahal is underrated (it is), neither of these opinions will have the slightest influence on a person's decision to visit. Back in Hanoi and alone again I check into a relatively nice hotel with a private room, There's a bia hoi joint across the road so I instantly know where my evening will be spent. On a table down from me another customer talks to his friend at ear-splitting volume and illustrates his verbiage with violent gesticulation. It could be a matter of grave importance like his wife sleeping with her personal trainer, or all the money he invested into vintage bia hoi seeming not to exist anymore. But after they leave and peace briefly reigns another group of friends arrives after their regular game of badminton and I decide that, as a rule, Vietnamese men talk to each other with incredible force. Maybe it's just part of the general volume of the place, I wonder if I'd ever acclimatise if I lived here? A sardined sleeper bus goes by slowly as the night draws in and I smile at the thought I may not have to get one of those again for a while, for tomorrow brings momentous decisions...
If you're in Northern Vietnam then you certainly have to or at least ought to or possibly shouldn't visit Ha Long Bay. With this sort of conviction Rory (my Dutch friend from the Ha Giang Loop) and I find ourselves on a minibus to the bay and our path unavoidably intersecting with *shudder* a tour. The bus driver has a drop-off itinerary for the passengers and virtually no English. We stop to let off some other passengers and, noticing that we're only six minutes walk from our own hostel, we hop out. But the bus driver knows that this isn't our scheduled stop and enthusiastically waves us back onboard. Well alright we could get a bit closer and save our legs so we comply. My spidey sense is tingling though. And reader, sometimes you must trust these instincts when travelling. Because the driver then drives us back in the opposite direction with any logical hopes of looping back to our hostel rapidly diminishing. We end up miles away and on the phone to the driver's boss who explains that there is now no time to take us back and could we just get a taxi? I'm beginning to hate the buses. The endless circling to fill them beyond capacity, the shouting drivers, the English-less drivers, the drivers that shout *because* they are English-less (the English would never do this), the innumerable, avoidable fuck-ups. Yeah this does all sound a bit entitled I grant and to anyone else if I was trying to sell the idea of travel I would say it's "all part of the fun!" but in such quantities it does wear a little. The idea of having my own wheels is becoming more and more appealing. The bus driver fly-tips us outside a café with a 'c'est la vie' smile that could incite me to violence. The café, as luck would have it, sells lunch and tours. But then most places in Southeast Asia sell X and tours where 'X' is any product. X could be lunch, X could be accommodation, X could be X. There's myriad tour options for Ha Long Bay in glossy brochures and on floating palaces way beyond the means of scruffy backpackers, I close the brochures as quickly as the café owner opens them. After a while the unspoken poverty is noted and we find a one day tour for tens of dollars rather than hundreds. My expectations are low. I know I am signing up for an experience so generic, so over-subscribed and so well-trodden that even the waters of the bay have grooves carved into them by the ceaseless traffic. But this knowledge avoids the inevitable disappointment of hoping for more. Or, rather, less. Less (fewer) people, less development, less commercialisation. I'm here because I'm here and so I can say I went. The tourist trail is proving harder to avoid than I had hoped.
Ha Long Town has that Sharm el-Sheikh feel about it. Bland development seeps outward from the water's edge like a rising tide that never recedes. There is a ferris wheel on a hill dominating the skyline and the cable cars required to get people up to it score the blue sky with black lines. There's a rollercoaster too. It all blights the natural beauty that brought people here in the first place. But too few will feel that way. They may come for the limestone pillars but they stay for the amenities and facilities of which those pillars are just one. Have you really thrown a plastic bottle into the sea until you've thrown a plastic bottle into the sea in Ha Long Bay? I temper my cynicism out loud to avoid seeming a cynic and so as not to dull Rory's generally positive demeanor. Before the tour we decide to spend a couple of days on Cat Ba which is a large island in the bay. As well as lunch, and the tour the café also rented us a couple of bikes that had seen better days. We park them up on the ferry that will take us to the island and as it putters out into the bay I begin to feel more optimistic. The waters are quiet as we pass the rainforest-topped limestone formations. Perhaps this place isn't as overcrowded as I feared? Maybe it is off-season and we've timed it well? As we turn into a large bay ringed by islets the triumph of hope over expectation is laid as bare as the rough sides of the pillars. We enter a floating car park full of ferries and cruise ships and pleasure craft.
Freed, wind in our hair, on smooth and straight tarmac under a benevolent sun giving the fields a tropical shade of green. White butterflies dance across the road, twirling and corkscrewing and, I guess, screwing. A sight of simple wonder only marred by the fact that they were doing this at head height and I was going at around 40mph. Their delicate bodies felt more substantial as they pinged off my face and chest and into crumpled heaps on the road. Beauty and horror were ever sides of the same coin. The hostel we checked into was a slick affair in the north of the island with lifts and keycards and a swimming pool and cleaners. The tourist trail flows through Cat Ba too. A point reinforced by the ubiquitous open-sided tourist bus/cart/taxis that transport, and I'd like to be general but fact dictates specificity, Chinese tourists about certain places. We watched them ply back and forth between beach and sight and hotel as we walked along the main drag. The following day we hit the beach ourselves to get our slice of sun, sea and sand. And slice was apt as the high cliffs behind us blocked the sun and cast a shadow over one quarter of the beach. The not-insignificant numbers of Chinese tourists were all clustered in this quarter like someone had fucked up the venue for a vampire convention. I'm not saying Chinese tourists are vampires, it's a metaphor. As the sun moved through the sky (not astronomically correct, don't write in) their territory slowly expanded. There is a race on. Will the sun's lethargic downwards arc plunge us into shadow before the light of understanding floods my brain? Because Rory is trying to explain Instagram stories and highlights to me. If I wasn't old before now, if I wasn't old when I started thinking tweed was a solid sartorial choice, if I wasn't old when I started making noises when sitting or standing then I am old now. Tech has always been my métier (that and obscure words) and I took an understanding of it, in-built and intuitive, as a constant. But now as Rory explains again with infinite patience I can see that I am as doomed as the rest to accidentally delete everything with a single swipe and to embrace racism with a single view. PC Load Letter and "didn't thing used to be better?". We ride to a sunset viewpoint for the evening and another shared sunset strikeout for me. The journey back to the hostel is enlivened by an impromptu race with two locals. Under mood street lighting they veer their bike pointedly into my path every time I try to pass, toying with grinning competence. I make it a rule never to combine drinking and driving and impromptu street races (pick two, any two) so I resist the testosterotemptation to force the overtake. Age brings you closer to death and yet steers you away from it. For dinner we walked to a waterfront section of the town lined with seafood restaurants. Dozens of plastic tables and chairs were arranged along the seawall and were mostly unoccupied. We picked a restaurant and indicated we'd like to sit next to the water rather than back on the road. Not possible we are told, only the empty tables on the road were available not the empty tables by the water. Curious but there's plenty more restaurants so we walk on. The next place refuses our request too. And the next. There's a lot of restaurants here and not a lot of patrons so in a seller's market this refusal to give us what we want seems like bad business sense. A couple more attempts and we find a place that will fulfill our regal request. And lo it seems these people know their business better than I do because within half an hour the tourist carts turn up and drop off the Chinese in significant numbers. Soon the whole waterfront is full and having a couple of thrifty western backpackers at a table for six rather than a flush Chinese family does indeed seem not worth it. It was an enlightening view of the powershift within the tourism industry. We westerners are not the cash cows anymore and the market will turn and will adapt to the needs of those that are. The Chinese are driving market forces, what would Mao say?
After a day or so of Cat Ba we returned to the mainland and do the tour. There's little to say about it, my expectations were met. It was beauty on rails. Ha Long Bay is beautiful, just look at the pictures! No, **just** look at the pictures don't actually go. But if you go to Northern Vietnam you *will* likely go and if you don't, you won't. It's like me saying that Bondi Beach is overrated (it is) or the Taj Mahal is underrated (it is), neither of these opinions will have the slightest influence on a person's decision to visit. Back in Hanoi and alone again I check into a relatively nice hotel with a private room, There's a bia hoi joint across the road so I instantly know where my evening will be spent. On a table down from me another customer talks to his friend at ear-splitting volume and illustrates his verbiage with violent gesticulation. It could be a matter of grave importance like his wife sleeping with her personal trainer, or all the money he invested into vintage bia hoi seeming not to exist anymore. But after they leave and peace briefly reigns another group of friends arrives after their regular game of badminton and I decide that, as a rule, Vietnamese men talk to each other with incredible force. Maybe it's just part of the general volume of the place, I wonder if I'd ever acclimatise if I lived here? A sardined sleeper bus goes by slowly as the night draws in and I smile at the thought I may not have to get one of those again for a while, for tomorrow brings momentous decisions...
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