Descending Dragons

What? I like titles with dragons.

Relatedly, I was told recently that Vietnamese dragons differ somewhat from our decent, British dragons in that they have the body of snakes, the heads of chameleons, the claws of eagles, the antlers of deer, the eyes of rabbits, the scales of fish and the ears of water buffalo - which is not an image I need to be presented with prior to a cup of coffee and a sit down.  Mind you, I think the guy who told me that might've been a bit shaky on heraldry, basic taxonomy and possibly the English language, so don't go citing me on Wiki.

You are a mess

Burbling to one side: this post is about our cruise around Hạ Long Bay (Ha long translates as "bay of descending dragons",  to explain the title) and Bai Tu Long Bay ("The dragon departs the offspring", in case you care) which is the nicer and less buggered by tourism of the two .  There are many outfits who run trips to the bays - it being a place of impressive natural beauty (UNESCO heritage site again, for those keeping count), with just shy of 2000 islands and islets scattered about- but a fair few of the companies are  irredeemably dodgy.  It's not unknown for boats to catch fire or sink.  We were to spend our three days/ two nights on a junk-type cruise boat run by one of the more reputable firms, Indochina Junk, who we'd had test-driven by two honeymooning friends of ours in January. They survived and were well-fed, so my two qualifying criteria were satisfied.

Having managed about four hours sleep in our hotel in Hanoi (owing to a delayed flight from Hué and a botched transfer from the airport), we were picked up by posh van to be driven the 3-4 hours to our boat. To no-one's surprise, we stopped on the way at another craft shop following the 'disabled people embroidering things and marble statues' theme.  M&Ms were about a fiver a bag.  

We stopped at a town near Ha Long to have lunch and watch a traditional water puppet show. It's like Punch and Judy in water, complete with squeaky voices but minus the domestic violence. The team of puppeteers - dressed in waders and hidden behind a screen - act out some scenarios from the life of our protagonist, described as 'an honest and hardworking farmer' via the medium of wooden figures.   It was certainly real.

We arrived soon after in Ha Long city - a grim-looking place with a foreboding Ferris Wheel peering down at you as you come and go.  Our guide on the cruise told us that overnight stays on the bay like ours will be banned from 2020, with only day-trips allowed. This is owing, he thinks, to the increased development of hotels and resorts in Ha Long City.    Yeah, I think I'd sooner drive from Hanoi, ta.

Seaside town or colliery?

Our boat was quite a small affair, with 11 cabins, some common areas, and a landing craft-type tender in tow.  They have a Junk ship-type style in that they have those odd corrugated sails that they can raise. We spent the time cruising around the bay area, occasionally taking out kayaks, and being generally overfed.  Meals came in no fewer  than 6 courses, and that was only if it was a short breakfast because lunch was going to be early.   The food was exceptional, consisting largely of seafood that had been caught in the locale that morning.

On our first night we tried fishing for squid.  This involves shining a light into the gloomy water and bobbing a lure off a bamboo rod.  I caught this monster:

Behold the Kraken

The boat cruised around the bays and parked up every so often for a kayak, swim or island sojourn.

On our second of the two nights, we were taken to an island for a barbecue in a natural cave complex on an island owned by the cruise company. Each of the many courses was accompanied by an elaborate fruit and vegetable sculpture made by the chef.

Our final morning was spent being taken around one of the local floating villages in a bamboo boat. These are towns where the locals have literally found it more economical to build homes on floating pontoon structures.  When kids grow up and move out and they can afford it, they build a new house and bolt it on the rest. Can't say it's for me.  It absolutely lashed down, which was very obliging of the weather, acclimatising us to home at this late part of our trip.  We also dropped by a pearl farm, which some megacorp has set up in the bay, to see pearl farming and perhaps buy pearls (hintity hint hint).

Then it was a case of cruising back to port.  The pilots of the tenders from the various vessels apparently drove their craft as they drive their motor vehicles, with three tenders attempting to fit in a mooring space big enough for about 2/3 of a tender.

Afterwards it was back to Hanoi, to wrap up Vietnam.

At Sea

We're off on another nautical adventure, this time around Cape Horn.  Presently we're in Ushuaia ("The End Of The World" as it's referred to by the local tourist industry) where it is a character-building 2°C.

Our stops this time involve taking zodiac boats out to look at glaciers and to irritate penguins, so we're definitely going dark for a few days.

Try and hold it together till then.

A last word on the Cruise

 

I felt a bit emotional about the end of the cruise, whether that was because I'd enjoyed it so much or just Stockholm Syndrome I can’t easily say, but it was definitely an important holiday within our larger trip.

We met a lot of very nice people.  One group in particular stand out (Hi Sue, Andy and the rest of you) from our second dinner, who were a delightful crowd of veteran cruise-goers also from the UK.  It was nice to meet people with their own stories to tell, as (and this will sound spoiled as hell) we are getting a bit sick of our own voices, talking about this trip.  So our raucous table of miscreants (the waiter had us sing an Elvis song, for no reason I can discern) was a welcome change of scene.

The entertainment was cheesy but endearing. We did pretty well at the cruise-long quiz league, bearing in mind there was just us two in the team.  We won the Mr and Mrs game, because survival requires that I be synchronised to my wife’s every whim and thought.  Although Chan still doesn’t know why she dragged us up on stage.  Although I had managed to tie my bow tie that night (first time since we got married, and that time I had our naval officer friend Simon to dress me) so perhaps she just made the most of me being presentable.

On the last day at sea there was an egg-drop competition which we failed at comprehensively.  We had to build something to protect an egg after we lofted it off the top floor of the atrium.  We rather half-arsed ours by filling four condoms with water and packing them, some plastic bags and one and a half pieces of French toast around our egg.  We made an eggy, slightly-lubed water bomb. Some of the other entries were more creative but we were going for accuracy.

I dubbed it “The Babymaker”


Deputy Cruise Director Matt with “Eggburt”

 
To be fair, Chan was dead on.

So, the entertainment as cheesy, a fair number of our fellow passengers were stereotypical grouchy old Americans, the restaurant food was nice but did have the hint of ‘airline’ about it due to the scale of production, and the bodies scattered about the pool don’t bear looking at, but for all that it was a pleasant place to call home for two weeks.  The staff really made constant efforts to make everything great and I really liked wandering around the ship, eating or swimming or whatever at a whim.  

As we approach the end of the American phase, it was nice to see some countries that we otherwise might not have visited, and to have this to bookmark this part of the trip.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Die Kreuzfahrt ist beendet. Es war angenehm und wir einige tolle Leute kennen gelernt.

Ashore – Aruba

Well this’ll be brief as we didn’t do anything aside from getting off the ship and catching a bus to the resort area in order to find the best beaches.  I’m not a beach person by any means as my natural habitat is hiding from the cursed Daystar in front of a glowing monitor.  However I’m also enough of a Brit to laugh in the face of melanoma when presented with cobalt-blue water and pristine white Caribbean sand.

 
This’ll do

So, we had a few drinks, such is is the sacred tradition of my people, bimbled onto the beach and swam about for as long as we guessed the margin-of-error of the sunblock protection allowed for. Then we went back to the ship.

  

Couple of things we noted: They have square coins and speak a messed up language broadly base on Dutch and Spanish.  An American couple from New York we spoke to in the bar reckoned this is the better of the Caribbean islands. They also reacted with horror at where we said we stayed in Brooklyn.  I’m so street.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Die Sonne glänzte. Das Wasser war blau. Die Getränke waren (etwas) billig. Alles war in Ordnung.

Ashore – Cartagena, Colombia

OK, straight to it.  This time we organised a tour independently with the formidable Dora at Cartagena Tour, who we saw first commanding coaches out of her way by way of hard stares.  She sent along the equally impressive Mercedes as our guide around Cartagena.  Mercedes is a retired teacher of Belgian stock and she took our group of seven around the sights of this major port town.

I discovered new settings on the camera

We were told of the large populations of European immigrants here, like her parents who were cheesed off with the state of post-war Belgium and buggered off to South America. It seemed to agree with them and a ton of subsequent Germans, Spaniards and assorted continentals.

This dog didn’t move as three coach tours ambled past her. Found a good spot.

Evidently there were never any issues here with the cartels as the geography makes it useless for cultivation or shipping of cocaine.  Apparently they are less of an issue anyway, as some very relevant people were recently shot. She said that most of that business has shifted to Mexico and Venezuela.  I understand that one would best avoid Medellin, though.

 
The vultures are disconcerting, mind

Our group were minded not to spend our time shopping all that much so we spent more time walking around the old town, where the buildings are a distinct style of colonial southern Spain/Moorish design.

 
 

By the by: I suck at haggling.  I wanted to buy one of the local variants of Panama hat and there are just a load of blokes selling them.  I saw one guy offering them for $5, we agreed I’d only spend $10 at most (putting that cash specifically in pocket so I could ‘show’ I have no more) and ended up buying one for $20.  This isn’t my area of expertise, I have to be honest.  Might need to fix some fraying ends with glue, too.

Worth it

Some of our fellow tour-goers went and bought some of the local emeralds, as apparently that’s a thing, and there is some manner of trade agreement allowing the 'Merkins to take them home duty free.  Not really on our priority list, though, I’m far too busy being fleeced on hats.

Chan made a friend

The obligatory over-engineered fortress is impressive too.



And the visitor centre by the cruise terminal (that sold the same hats for $19, Gareth, you savvy bastard) had a little zoo attached to it.  I’m pretty sure this monkey just had a moody face, as the others looked perfectly fine:

“Shit, I think I left the iron on”

 
 

“Senor, I haff a cousin in Wyoming. He says I must hurt you. You unnerstan’ this is jus’ business and I take no pleasure in what I muss do”

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben Cartagena in Kolumbien besucht. Viele Deutsche und andere Europäer sind hier nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ausgewandert. Es gab weniger Probleme mit Drogen jetzt, dass sie viele des Kartellführer erschossen.