We arrived in Hanoi after a 15 hour train ride. Kayleigh and I got to our room only to realize that the 2 bunks below ours were occupied by a family of 4. Cramped living quarters to say the least. Kirsten and Alexa did not fair much better, as they had 3 extra people in their room as well. The train probably had the worst bathrooms of the trip thus far. No toilet paper, no soap, disgustingly dirty (as I’m sure you can imagine from all the splashing around in a moving train), and a stench that grew worse by the hour. It was the longest ride of our lives. Anyway, things didn’t get much better when we got off either, as we chose a taxi driver who clearly was trying to scam us. What should have cost us about 2 dollars (in comparison to the other cabs we were taking), he tried to charge 10 dollars for. After making sure our bags were out of the trunk, we flat out refused to pay him the whole fair – a move that he seemed to knowingly agree with.
Finally we arrived at the backpackers hostel for a night before taking of on our cruise of Halong Bay. The cruise was called “castaways” and was a self-titled “party boat”. The Bay itself was beautiful – the cruise was anything but. In the midst of excessive drinking (not by us of course!) and god knows what else, we were told that if we drank with our right hand or used the words “ten” or “mine”, we either had to down our drink or do ten push-ups on the spot. We are getting too old for this s#*%. The first day was spent kayaking through the bay, and diving off the boat – which was awesome! The first night was spent playing unmentionable games and literally saving a crazy drunk Irish guy from drowning. Kayleigh and I retired to the room at about 2 am to hear a huge splash (we were the only ones on the boat to hear it). We ran outside and looked over the edge to find this Irish guy helplessly flapping his arms, and not responding to our calls. Kayleigh ran up and grabbed his friend to pull out his dead weight body from the water. He lived to see another day.
The second day we made our way to a private island where we got to go tubing and play volleyball. Kayleigh also rock climbed and made it to the top of the hardest course! At night we all went swimming in the bay and saw the infamous glowing plankton. If you swished your hands in the water, it would light up and you could see tiny sparkling plankton sticking to your arms. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. Very magical. Our accommodation consisted of a cabin, with no walls and about 14 bunks. We got a mosquito net. That’s it. No pillow, no blanket, nothing.
Somehow everybody made it out alive. I had the pleasure of having one of the Irishmen fall asleep on my shoulder for the whole bus ride home. Needless to say, we were happy to get back to our hostel.
We spent the next day exploring the city and eating the best food (noodles, pho, spring rolls – the usual). After all was said and done, the city didn’t have as much to offer as we had anticipated. We ended up finding a good karaoke bar and belting out tunes by ourselves.
Then Alex came!
All five of us spent the last night of the girls trip together going to a pub crawl put on by he backpackers hostel. 3 bars and a lot of good tunes later, it was pouring rain, and we took a moped ride home. Alex and I said bye to the girls in the morning and headed back to Halong bay (on a much tamer boat). Again we got to kayak, swim with the plankton, and enjoy the beautiful landscape. The water calm enough that we could swim to neighbouring islands. We tried to take pictures, but they just don’t do the magnificent scenery justice. We also witnessed the most ferocious thunder storm of our lives. The noise woke us up at about 3 in the morning, and it sounded like the entire sky was going to collapse. The lows of the trip were finding a cockroach, and giant jumping worm, and a spider in our rooms. I tried to wash the worm down the drain with the shower head, and it crawled back up three times! Sick.
We’re now sitting at the airport awaiting our flight to Bali, where we will be meeting our good friends Danielle and Steve!
20somethingcollegelife 