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We had a shopping/coffee/happyhouse stop half-way to Halong at a huge centre selling goods made by disabled people. Absolutely beautiful stuff – intricate tapestries made by deaf-mute people, amazing silks, sewing which you could have done in three hours, jewellery, ceramics, etc etc. We only had a 20 minute stopover so I had to make a very quick decision as to which silk print to buy. Didn’t have time to try on the jewellery, there was some lovely green (and I found out later that it was Vietnamese Jade) or black Vietnamese Pearls.
We arrived at Halong Bay around midaday and got on board a tender to be transported to our junk. Wow, luxury with a Capital L. I got a room on my own, as did Kathy and Dianne as we had exclusive use of the junk. Time to freshen up and then upstairs for lunch. Beautiful lunch for the seafood eaters, and Kathy and I had 2 little fried sausages for starters, then chicken kebab, then some beef and the last dish was pork. A bit much meat in one sitting really. It was all fried or grilled and quite rich and after me not eating anything much for the last 4-5 months it sat a bit heavy in my tummy.
After lunch we boarded the tender and we were taken ashore to visit the caves. Bit of a walk and a climb here – about 1000 steps, thankfully not all of the up, but a bit of a workout all the same. I thought my calf muscles might suffer after this but amazingly not.
The caves were pretty amazing and after that there was a visit to the grotto – under a tunnel in the rocks to enter this fully enclosed grotto. It was here we were supposed to see the monkeys but they were hiding, probably too hot for them as well. A tiny wee girl was rowing the 12 of us in the boat – she gave me a turn t rowing. Certainly not as easy as she made it look, that’s for sure.
Back on board and time for a shower and sit on the deck for pre-dinner cocktails and watch the sunset. Seems that we are doing a lot of eating on this trip. And again the seafood dinner was great, but our non-seafood version was again a course each of chicken, pork, beef.
We had the opportunity have our nails done by an insistent young lady, who also had jewellery and a few prints and other souvenirs for sale. I bought a lovely set of black/blue pearl drop earings.
About 2 in the morning the effects of all that meat hit me and for the next 24 hours I was not at all well. So I missed the sunrise, and the trip to the beach for a swim and a trip to another cave. Just lay in my cabin sipping cold lemonade to keep hydrated.
We left the Junk at midday after everyone else had brunch and made our way back to Hanoi, with me sleeping in the back of the bus, stopping along the way at a pineapple farm and again at the complex we had stopped at yesterday. I made a very hasty trip to the ‘happy house’ and then bought a cup of Lipton Tea and a packet of round wine biscuits. All I felt like really was some vegemite toast or marmite soup, but this was the closest I could get to something simple to put into my now very empty tummy.
We made it back to Hanoi just as a thunder storm arrived and the heavens just opened up and it poured, so we missed out on the last couple of hours wandering and instead headed up to the restaurant at the top of a tall building where we hung out over a cup of tea (and the others mostly ate ice-cream) for as long as we could.
It was then on to the train station to pick up our dinner boxes (yuk more food) and board the train for our trip to Hue. We were in four berth cabins, and as soon as we were aboard I curled up on my bunk and slept. Everyone else was comfortable – the air conditioning was working, but I was freezing cold, so one of the nurses on board, worried that I might be running a fever gave me a couple of Panadol. Up and down several times during the night, but I did manage to get a lot of sleep and by morning I was feeling a hell of a lot better. Certainly not wanting anything to eat yet, but at least feeling better. 24 hours wasted dam it!!!
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