Bay of Descending Dragons

At the moment we're in Hue in central Vietnam, but since we only arrived today the tale of Hue will have to wait until another time. This post will tell you all about our trip to Halong Bay, a site of no little beauty off the northern coast of Vietnam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Long_Bay), and the key point in the itinerary of many a tourist in Hanoi.

Halong Bay, as our tour guide told us, means "Bay of Descending Dragons" because apparently some dragons defended Vietnam from China in the mythological past and then came down into the bay (and possibly turned into the islands that dot the bay, or possibly just lived on the islands, depending on who is telling the story). The water is green and inviting, and the cruises are plentiful. You can even, as I did, dive off the top of a quite large boat into the sea (though I wouldn't recommend doing as I did and catching your genitals on the water, as it does knock the wind out of you a bit).

So we spent two days and a night enjoying this beautiful part of the world. Less enjoyable was the air conditioning in our room which alternately cooked or froze us and which wouldn't be turned off by its own remote (to which it was generally reticent to respond, causing my temper to somewhat fray at 3am while it was boiling my brain in its own juice). Also less enjoyable was the continual sense of mean-spirited penny-pinching that accompanied the tour experience. I've heard it said that a good rule in business is to promise less and deliver more; this has not been taken on board by Halong tour organisers. Although the tour was really good and well worth doing, all the little things (leaving later than was said, arriving back earlier, no free drinking water, over-priced drinks generally, making us leave our cabins earlier than originally said, making us wait around in the hot sun on the quay for ages to no apparent purpose) add up to leave a slightly bad taste in the mouth. Some of our fellow tourers were quite irked by it all by the end. I realise that the people running these tours figure that there isn't much repeat trade anyway, but you'd think word of mouth would be a powerful form of generating business amongst backpackers, especially in these socially networked times.

Anyway, in conclusion, Halong Bay is well worth seeing. We went into some limestone caves and marvelled at the shape of rock (I was given props for my imagination by the tour guide for correctly spotting that one rock looked like a dolphin); we saw a floating village and its fish farm (including a horseshoe crab trying to escape) and we went kayaking (is kayak usable as a verb? "to kayak"?), but the best bits were just floating around through the bay and enjoying the peace. Tours should focus more on that. And less on parking up in a bay with ten other tour boats blasting us with their awful Asian karaoke numbers until 10pm.