Halong Bay

Vietnam Trip ~ Days 11-13

July 23-25, 2012

We got up early in the morning on Monday, had the free breakfast our hostel provided, and then used the computers in the lobby while we waited for our bus to arrive to take us to our tour of Halong Bay. It was supposed to arrive around 8 a.m., but was late. After waiting for about fifteen minutes, one of the men working at the hostel sat down at the computer beside me that Jonathan had just vacated. He looked up something on Google Translate and then told us, "I don't think you can go to Halong Bay today."' We were confused and asked why. He said the tour company had called and said there was a thunderstorm there. I looked at the computer he was using and he had looked up the word 'storm.' So then we had to figure out what to do instead of going on our tour. We looked up the weather for the Halong Bay area and it said it was supposed to be stormy all week until next Sunday. We didn't really want to just stay in Hanoi until our flight back down to Saigon, so we decided to just get a public bus to Halong City and at least see the bay from shore if we couldn't go out sailing on it. We got a refund for our trip and the lady at the front desk was sad we weren't able to go. She said that we could do a 2 day/1 night trip tomorrow if the weather was better, but we didn't really want to sit around for an extra day and then just have the weather not cooperate for us. So we got a taxi ride to the bus station. The taxi driver didn't actually know where the station was since it was quite a ways from the Old Quarter (I guess not too many tourists use the public buses since most get tours out to Halong Bay). He stopped twice to ask other taxi and motorcycle taxi drivers where the station was. Finally we arrived and then had an easy time buying tickets.

The bus trip was about 4.5 or 5 hours and some of it was in rain, especially the nearer we got to the bay. When we got close, the bus stopped and we had to get out and take motorcycle taxis the 5 remaining km to Halong City. We hurriedly dug our raincoats and pack covers out and put them on, then hopped on the bikes. Soon after we got to the hotel, the rain stopped! We got a hotel near the shore and then wandered around looking at the small city. After we ate supper, we walked down the main street in Halong City and came to a tour company. We went in and asked the lady about a tour of the bay and she told us about a couple options we could have if the weather got better. Since we couldn't go on a 3 day/2 night tour anymore we decided a 2 day/1 night would be nice. She said to come by the office by noon the next day to see if the weather would allow us to go.

When we got back to our hotel that evening we looked through the tour book that our hotel had at the front desk. It looked like a good tour, too, and it had a nice itinerary. We didn't know which one to take, so early Tuesday morning Jonathan walked back to the tour company to ask the lady there for the itinerary of that trip. It turned out that the weather wasn't good enough for going on a trip that day either, and we asked the man at our hotel, too, but he said his tour wasn't going either. So we spent the day just relaxing and didn't do too much. We did change hotels, though, to a hotel mentioned in our guidebook. We didn't really appreciate the man at the first hotel since he was quite pushy to try to get us to do what he thought we should do and also seemed a little too interested and snoopy in our plans. We didn't like that very much, so we switched to a hotel a few buildings down the street. It rained really hard in the afternoon and we spent most of it indoors watching some TV. In the evening we went back outdoors and walked around a bit, and then had supper before turning in for the night.

Wednesday morning we got up and ready to head out by 7:45. Jonathan tried calling the tour company on the phone in our room, but it didn't work so we went downstairs to call from the lobby. The lady told us that there was no tour in the morning, but we should come to her office just before noon and we could go on an afternoon tour that was coming from Hanoi. So we were happy we'd at least get to see some of the bay before we had to leave that area and go back to Hanoi. We walked along the shore in the late morning and took some pictures of the cloudy bay from the beach and dock. Then we headed to the tour company. They confirmed that we could, in fact, go on the tour and we were excited to finally explore a bit of the bay. We had a quick lunch at a restaurant across the street, where we could see the tour company from the restaurant windows. After two days of waiting we didn't want to accidentally miss the tour!

After lunch, we waited for a while at the tour company and finally one of the workers got a taxi and brought us out to the ferry dock. He showed us where to join our group and then we were with them for the rest of the afternoon. We just saw a small part of the bay, but it was quite amazing to see such huge limestone karsts jutting steeply out of the water all over the place! We visited a floating village and got rides in small boats around that area. Then we went farther around that group of islands and finally ended up at a cave that we walked through before heading back to the harbour. The trip took us about three and a half hours in total, not what we'd initially planned, but it was certainly better than not being able to go out in the bay at all. In the end, we decided that we'll have to come back here sometime and spend a good amount of time just in this northern area to see more of the bay and the other two bays that are nearby and less popular with tourists.

We were able to get the shuttle bus back to Hanoi with our group so it was much nicer and faster than taking a public bus like we had to get out to Halong City. It took us about three and a half hours with a half an hour stop for bathrooms, and looking at a souvenir shop.

So Mother Nature definitely had her own plans for the last few days of our trip. Hopefully we'll be able to come back and visit northern Vietnam again, though, to spend a little bit more time in this area.

Empty beach

The bay

Tour boats

We rounded a corner...

...and there sat a village!

On the way home from school

We took a ride in a small boat, going through the tunnel

Fruit seller

School building

Leaving

So close yet so far

Stairs

Skittles lights

Strange formation

Underground beauty

Our dunnage

Last look

Next up: Back in Hanoi & Ho Chi Minh City

DMZ Tour

Day 2 of Quiring-family visit

Jonathan and I had wanted to go to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea at some point before we left Korea. When my parents told us they were planning to come visit, we decided to wait until they came to take the day tour. On Friday, June 29, we got up early and took the subway to Dongdaemun Station. We had a few delays* in getting to the pick-up stop, but we managed to get there right in time, and the tour bus pulled up pretty much just as we arrived.

Went by this gate (Dongdaemun) on the way to meet our bus

Contemplation

After a couple more stops to pick up other tourists, we headed north for about an hour. The trip went right along the Han River and was very picturesque. Our guide was a very pleasant and knowledgeable young lady who told us the background of the Korean War and the split between North and South Korea while we traveled. As we left Seoul and neared the DMZ, we started noticing the razor wire fence along the South Korean edge of the river and saw sentry boxes every so often.

Driving by the Han River lined with razor wire and sentry boxes

Another sentry box

Observatory

North Korean mountains

Our first stop was at the Imjingak unification tourist resort, where we had about 15 minutes to look around at a huge bell, an old rusting train engine riddled with bullets from a long-ago trip across the Freedom Bridge, and a few look-out platforms overlooking the DMZ. Everyone hurried to get back to the bus in time. Our guide told us that we had a strict time schedule we had to follow and said that anyone who was late getting back on the bus would have to sing a song for the rest of the tourists. We did hear a couple songs that day. :)

Another giant bell - these things are everywhere

Giant bell knocker

Ali often levitates when she's in a hurry

Old engine that made train sounds

Razor wire

Freedom Bridge

Random statues we saw as we left the Imjingak unification tourist resort

Next we drove into the DMZ. South Korean soldiers came onto our bus at the check-point and we were all told ahead of time to keep our cameras out of sight while we were stopped there. After we were allowed into the DMZ, we went to the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. It was discovered just 52 km north of Seoul in 1978. A brochure we were given for our tour said that, "the tunnel is 1,635m in length, 2m in width, and 2m in height." It is big enough for an army of 30,000 fully-armed soldiers to pass through within an hour. This is the largest tunnel discovered so far. (I believe there have been four tunnels discovered all within a few years of each other.) Our group went into a building and down a hall where we each grabbed a hard hat from a shelf on a wall and then started down a very steep walkway down to the actual tunnel. It was quite a way down and once we got to the bottom we were able to walk another long way to where it was closed-off. In some parts you had to crouch to keep from hitting your head on the ceiling (hence the hard hats). Poor Jonathan had quite the bent-over walk in some parts of the tunnel. As we arrived at the end of where we could walk, we could go one-by-one (there wasn't room for two people back there) to the wall in the tunnel and look through a window to see that the tunnel kept on going as far back as you could see. Then we turned around and walked back through the tunnel and back up the steep walkway. It definitely felt good to come back out into the sunshine after all that time underground! We weren't allowed to take cameras into the tunnel, so we don't have any pictures of that. After walking through the tunnel, our group watched a 15-minute video about the war and how the two countries ended up split into north and south before we loaded back into the bus for our next stop.

Posing by the split globe at the site of the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel

Ali and Tyler pose on the DMZ sign at the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel site

Fits you to a 'd'

Paper cup ad while waiting to enter the theater to watch the video

Drink up!

Smiling

Next we visited the Dora Observatory. On the short drive there, our guide told us that we could take pictures at the Dora Observatory, but we had to stay behind the yellow line to take them. She said if we took any pictures in front of the yellow line, one of the South Korean soldiers would take our cameras and delete those pictures. We were allowed to go in front of the yellow lines to look, but not to take pictures. When we arrived, we realized that pretty much any pictures we took from behind the yellow lines wouldn't show much of anything anyway, so we can't really show you what North Korea looks like... We could see a South Korean flag in the South Korean section of the DMZ and a North Korean flag in the North Korean section. There is also an industrial complex in the DMZ that we could see where some South Koreans go to work everyday. They get bussed in to work in the morning and then are bussed back out of the DMZ each evening. We could also see a propaganda village in North Korea that was built by the North Koreans, but has no people living in it.

Had to stand 10 or 12 feet back from the wall if I was taking pictures. This is actually the DMZ in front of us,
and from here we could actually see a flag and a propaganda village in North Korea

A popular soldier

Our last stop of the day was at Dorasan Station, a very spiffy-looking train station that used to be used for travel between North and South Korea. But after a few mishaps, travel between the two countries was shut down and now Dorasan is basically just a stop for tourists on bus tours of the DMZ. We looked around the station, some people got pictures with the soldiers there, and others used the very nice washroom facilities before we headed back to Seoul.

Dorasan, the last train station before North Korea - the line into North Korea does not get used anymore

The only people in the station are tourists from bus tour groups and a few South Korean soldiers having their pictures taken

Bush at the opening ceremony

Empty station

Stamping North Korean passport stamps on a 1,000 won bill
(would cause problems in an actual passport...)

Riding the bus back

Once back in Seoul we were treated to an extra stop. Our guide told us we could choose between going to an amethyst store or a ginseng store. The vote was for a ginseng store and we stopped there to learn about ginseng and its wonderful properties. We learned very quickly that the whole purpose of the stop was to try to get us to buy their extremely overpriced-but-fancily-wrapped products. Some people decided to try it out, but our little group tried the samples and then discreetly left the store and got back on the bus. At the end of the tour, our guide dropped people back off at a few places around Seoul. In our next post we'll show you what we did for the rest of our afternoon.

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*If you want to hear the story of the delays, here it is: We stopped at a convenience store on our walk to the subway to get my parents and brother T-money cards (cards you can load with money and scan to use the subway and bus systems) so they could use the subway with ease during their time in Seoul. Then we had to get out money at the ATM to load onto the T-money cards. We had planned to stop at the bank right on the way to the subway, but the ATM section was still closed and locked up, so we had to find an ATM in the subway station. Next the machine that loads the money value onto the T-money card wasn't working with the cards we'd gotten. Luckily the convenience store in the station loaded the money on the cards for us and we were off again. We narrowly missed the subway that was at the station when we went down to the platform, so we had to wait for the next one. Then we got out at the wrong exit at Dongdaemun Station and had to walk all around an intersection to get to the place the bus would be meeting us. We did end up making it to the pick-up spot before the bus, though, thankfully!