Sorry Charlie

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

 

Ha Long does it take for the honeymoon in Vietnam to last? About two weeks. So stuff took a turn for the not so awesome starting yesterday AM after the night train back from Sa Pa, where I left my fanclub of 4 nd a half foot teenaged Hmong girls and barmen after a week. The night train itself wasn't the issue, but as soon as it ended stuff went downhill.  Groggy and half asleep at 5 AM arrival, I made the mistake of jumping in a fake taxi with a fake meter - which I recognized as such as the ride back to the Hanoi Hilton cost twice as much as it should and they were trying to hustle me into some fleabag hotel of theirs.  So controversy ensued.  Normally I would have paid the extra 1$ that they were screwing me with without complaint.  However, I've been on the road for 4 months, and overcharged, swindled, and screwed over so much that I can no longer take it.  So I screamed at them and cursed them out and generally made a scene which they did not like. I didn't resort to physical violence because my bags were too heavy and I was too tired, but it was an option. Now months ago I would have deplored such conduct - but fuck it. If somebody wants to steal my money, then that is the price they will pay.

 

So things took a turn for the even worse on arrival at the Hilton - they had booked me for a room on the 12th (the night I left for Hanoi) instead of the 13th as I had requested, and even upgraded me to a suite - which I had the choice of using for a full five and a half hours before being kicked out.  I declined this generous offer without profanity and took my leave for Ha Long Bay, which is the other highlight of North Vietnam, a day before I had initially planned. I traveled via bus - interesting to note that as in India, bus conductors hustle all the way up and down the road to the destination to pick up more passengers.  Unlike India, however, where the bus slowly ambles through the bazaars and the conductors shout the destination, as the bus slowly sardinifies, the Vietnamese techique is for the conductor to point and scream  and the small number of pedestrians as the bus honks its way down the highway at 50 mph, an approach that seemed a lot less successful.

 

Ha Long Bay is kind of unimpressive resort town, full of chinese style hotels as it attracts chinese tourists by the boat and bus load from across the border about 30k away.  The primary attraction is the bay itself, which is loaded with thousands of giant limestone islands and outcroppings which basically form a giant maze. These things are a dime a dozen across the south china sea but the ones here are the most in one place, and I have to say they're impressive in spite of the Coney Island atmosphere that surrounds them.

 

So earlier today, I set off on a boat trip arranged by my hotel.  At 8$ an hour for 6 hours, I thought this trip was outrageously expensive by vietnamese standards, but was too dazed to decline when I scheduled it.  When I got to the jetty this AM, my fears were allayed by the fact that my 50$ bought me a junk with a 3 man crew, and seating for 29 of my closest friends.  Say, where the hell were you guys anyway? I always come to all of your stuff except when I don't. 

 

We set off for a gilliganesque tour of the bay and some of the islands. The first stop was a series of limestone caverns, which after seeing the ones in Borneo, were not that impressive.   Making them less impressive was that the Vietnamese subscribe to the Chinese school of tourist site development, which is to put tacky colored lights and railings and generally make things as awful looking as possible in order to attract crowds of custom hat wearing, guide flag following chinese tourists.  Their efforts were an unmitigated success.

 

Lunch was mildly interesting, as it was purchased off one of the various floating seafood markets, and the rest of the cruise was largely uneventful.  The major event happened 15 minutes after I left the boat, and discovered that Giligan or the Skipper had taken the liberty of stealing my mp3 player out of my bag while I was on deck, me having forgotten it was in there. I hauled ass back to the pier to create a scene with hopes of somehow getting it back, but the boat was long, long, gone.  I thought about going to the police, but with me having scant few details and not really knowing where the police station is, I'm thinking the chances of them finding anything by tomorrow am are slim.  So I'm just going to bitch to the hotel staff who arranged it about how their countrymen are thieves.  Again, I don't really give a shit about the mp3 player - it was a cheap one and I haven't used it in months because I'm sick of the songs.  I'm just tired of being swindled, stolen from, and most of all of being constantly targeted for it, and therefore always having to be guarded.  It makes it reallly hard to be nice to people in a country who actually are being nice to you when their countrymen smile while robbing from you.

 

Vietnam, I loved you, and your beer, and your pork, but you are making things very difficult.  With only south Vietnam to go, which few people on the tourist trail are as impressed with as the North, and with Saigon being regarded as kind of a pit, I'm thinking of cutting my time here shorter than anticipated.