Day 86 - Ha Long Bay

16.10.09

I've booked a tour to Halong bay as it is the only way that you can get to tour the bay via boat and spend a night out in the bay. The bus comes to the hotel just after 8am to pick me and a girl called Kim from Liverpool up and drive us to the bay. I have paid 40 Dollars for travel to the bay, 3 meals a day, the boat tour and a night on the boat, kayaking, trekking in Cat Ba Island on the bay, a night staying on the Island and the boat back to coast and then a bus back to Hanoi. All in all it's 3 days and 2 nights and coming in at less than £30, it's the cheapest option available (mid- 50 Dollars and top 95 Dollars), so I'm slightly worried at the quality. Apparently the lady at reception from whom I booked it all, said that out of every ten people only 3 are happy and about 7 complain, I push on anyway as it can't be that bad.

We get to Ha Long bay and are left for about 30 mins doing nothing as everyone else around us gets on boats, is this a sign of things to come? Our leader then comes along and puts us on a boat, which is actually very nice and then we set off. There are only about 16 people on the boat in total and we have a good sized lunch before touring around the Islands and visiting one of the caves. In the evening the boats drops anchor along with about 40 others in an area sheltered by Islands on 3 sides, which I am told is due to safety if there is a storm in the night. A couple of weeks ago there was a typhoon that hit and the resulting storm overturned a boat and several crew and tourists died, so I'm glad for the shelter. Everyone is in bed by 11pm, but I stay up a bit later and end up talking to the tour operator and some of the crew and then they bring out a fish stew which they just cooked and we all tuck in to a midnight snack. The stars out here are nice and falling asleep on a boat in such beautiful surroundings is definitely an experience.

Day 85 - Hanoi

15.10.09

I have a relative lie in this morning and wake up at 10am, having a cold shower as there is no hot water to be found, although the high heat and humidity of Vietnam make it quite refreshing. Into the cafe for my free breakfast included in the deal and I head off into the labyrinth that is Hanoi once again. After a brief foray to the north of the old quarter and grabbing some deep fried nibbles for lunch, I take a wander over to the Temple of Literature. It's a big complex and is nice enough, although compared to the vast expanses of the Chinese Confucius temples, or the sheer brilliance and colour of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, it is rather plain. As per usual outside the temple the hordes of motorbike drivers and pedal powered rickshaw drivers hawk for your business and will actually follow you down the road. I find that talking to them in Chinese gets a look of confusion and surprise, followed by disappointment at the fact they can't communicate and then they quickly leave you alone.

Walking back to the hotel I cross over the railway tracks and then somehow manage to double back on myself and cross over them again. I think that it must just be a siding and so keep on walking, 30mins later I am definitely in the wrong area, having a look at the map doesn't shed any light whatsoever on my location so I decide to keep wandering. Another 30 mins later and I ask a security guard who must have been trying to actively be unhelpful and so I keep wandering. About 20 mins later and I hit a road on the map, it turns out that I have managed for nearly and hour and a half, to systematically take every turning that would put me as far away as possible from my hotel, but all is well as I know where I am going now and I head off down the road... Turns out that I don't know where I am going and end up walking the wrong way down the road only to ask another security guard, who is more than helpful and points me in the right direction and points out my error on the map. It takes me about 2 hours to walk back home, I was way way way off track.

I also find out today my brand for Geneva, I am in Global Design for System Professional. It's a 'prestige' brand for high end hair salons and professional hair care. My new boss encourages me to visit high end hair salons before I head over to start work, I'm not sure if I'm in the right place for high end.

Day 84 - Hanoi

The train pulls into Hanoi Ga at a pitch black 4.30am. Our sleeper cabins are predominately full of Vietnamese and hardly any foreigners get off the back section of the train, however at the other end, there are several high end private carriages attached where the fare is more than double the price, the cabins are lined with wood and you get fresh fruit and a carriage attendant, with only 4 beds per compartment. Low and behold, hordes of westerners flow out of these cabins and I could be at a train station in London. Leaving the station I am surprised at how many foreign people there are here, it's a big difference to China, where you see only a handful of foreign people in most places.

Getting to my hotel at a bright 5am I have to wake up the sleeping guard to let me into the hotel so I can drop off my bags, I potter about and arrange my things for an hour or so and then head out into town for a bright 6.30am Hanoi start. It's a busy and bustling city and the amount of motorbikes on the road is ridiculous, it's like playing a computer game with the motorbikes the bombs trying to hit you as you walk across the road. A walk around Hanoi's major sights and to Hoan Kiem lake, which reputedly has giant tortoises living in it, one specimen found dead a few years ago weighed in at 250kg and was 2.1 long, it's stuffed in a museum and is crazy big. With no one to witness it, I saw what I thought was a seal's head surface out of the water and move along a few feet before diving back under again. I swear that this thing was massive and it felt like spotting Nessie. My camera was in my bag so unfortunately no photos to back my claim. It's supposed to be good luck if you spot one, so maybe it's an omen for the rest of my Vietnam travels.

The other adventure today is getting lost. After a walk to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, I think I am walking back to the hotel, but somehow manage to double back on my self, and end up walking in the exact wrong direction. Then consistently for about two hours, I think to my self, I will walk around and find my way, but always seem to walk almost perfectly in the opposite direction to which I should be going. I finally hit a road on the map and take what I think is the right way only to find out at the end that I went the wrong direction. It takes just shy of 3 hours to eventually walk back home... at a fast pace.

Day 83 - Hekou, Lao Cai

13.10.09

Pulling into the bus station just after midday, I go and eat my final Chinese meal before saying my goodbyes to the People's Republic Of China and entering the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Once on the other side, I am immediately pestered by someone who wants to change my money and another who wants to give me a lift on the back of a motorcycle to the train station. I politefully decline and so am obviously followed a short while by the money changer and then about 200m by the motorbike driver. Vietnam seems the same as China so far except that the signs are all in an alphabet that is based on Latin, which in theory should be easier to master and find my way.

Getting to the train station and buying my tickets onwards to Hanoi is easy than buying them back home. The people at the counter speak English, the prices for each option (hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper, soft sleeper, etc.) are also posted on the window along with a timetable. It's over in a matter of seconds and far from the first stressful buying of tickets in China. I have 5 hours to kill, so find an internet cafe and whizz around on the net while guarding my bags and doing some research to prep for my Vietnam travels. The train leaves at 7.30pm and I am sharing with a Peruvian guy called Pedro Pablo and a Vietnamese man called Yen (pronounced with a falling tone) and a woman called Yen(pronounced with a rising tone). Chug, chug, chug and we are off to Hanoi...

Day 82 - Kunming, Somewhere on a road

12.10.09

Another very relaxing wake up and a saunter down to the post office to send my soon to be redundant China guidebook and mountain scarfs, and the assortment of dried leaves that I bought yesterday. Tonight my sleeper bus leaves at 7.30 and heads off south down to the border town of Hekou and from there it's a walk across the river and I shall be in Vietnam. I end buying some more Pu'er before I leave China so I can have some while I am wondering around the jungles, beaches and bustling cities of China's neighbour. It's quite sad to think that I will be leaving the country I have spent so long in and experienced so much in. I have been here since the 10th of August and have raked up 63 days travelling over a fantastic country, meeting some great people and learning about a fascinating culture, history and language. The next stop Vietnam, will, hopefully be equally as good, but I am not going to enjoy going back to a zero communication level as it makes everything so so hard.

I get on my bus at 7.00pm and we leave on time 30mins later. It's old, quite small and smells as if it has done many journeys to the humid and sweaty south China-Vietnam border, mmmmm. At about 1.30am the bus stops and I wake from my slumber partly and have a look around, but don't really take any notice and fall back asleep. when I really wake up at about 7am, we are still in the same place and the bus doors are open and there is a lot of traffic backed up around us. Out of the bus and down the road I find out that there has been an accident and an artic has literally taken out a small minibus, the debris of the crash spread out along the road a good 50m or so. I can't see any sign of the passengers as they would have been long gone, but outside the mini bus sits one lone trainer. We start moving at about 8am and arrive in Hekou at lunch time the next day.

Day 81 - Kunming

11.10.09

Beautiful lie in until 10am and slowly meandering out of bed and into the shower, all in all I'm out of the hostel at a very unrespectable midday for what will be my last full day in China, but I feel refreshed. I have nothing to do today really, apart from do a bit of planning for my onward travels, and I have decided to head straight to Hanoi and have some Vietnamese fun. I head over to the University district with it's many swish and fancy cafes, shops, restaurants and a shop that stocks English language books. 5 mins of quick browsing and I pick up a guidebook for Vietnam for 240Y, to put this into perspective I am currently paying 35Y per night in accommodation, can get a large meal for less than 10Y and a 500ml bottle of beer costs about 3-5Y. I guess they just know their market and that tourists will pay for the privilege to know about something before they get there.

After my big spending I head over to a tea shop and buy some Pu'er tea, famously made in Yunnan and what I sampled a few days before in Lijiang. I get to sit down and sample some of the teas and over the course of an hour or so I buy two Pu'ers, a green tea, and a Ku(bitter) tea, I'm quite sure I've not been duped as the teas are lovely, well worth the buy and I have enough to last for ages. Internet cafe in to the evening to see if I can finally get this blog up to date.

Day 80 - Kunming

10.10.09

We all get up apart from Ilya who is stay another day and head off to Tiger Leaping Gorge tomorrow, to catch our morning transport in very different directions. Michel is going to the airport to fly north east and to Chengdu, Chen is going north west(ish) to Shangri-la and I'm heading off south east to Kunming. It's another goodbye to some great people and again it's sad to say goodbye to people you meet along the way. You can form good friendships considering you eat, travel, sleep and explore all with the same people and spend more or less all of your time with them. The journey to Kunming is an average 9 hours or so and over the course of the 500km the weather gets hotter and hotter and I am no longer in the relative cool of China's highlands. The city is relatively small for China's standards and seems quite relaxed and green, with it's tree lined roads and laid back atmosphere.

A bit of shopping and I buy some new headphones as my Heathrow £40 duty free pair have broke down, Gutted! Also to the global firm that is the giant Walmart plonked in the middle of Kunming. It's heaven as I love strolling around the Chinese super markets at home and this is like one massive house party, if I was back home I would come out with trolley loads of weird and wonderful things.