First off, Merry Christmas to everyone in America!!
Today was a travel day. We spent the day going from Hanoi to Cat Ba Island in Ha Long bay.
Started the day out at 7 am, writing my blog (which I posted yesterday). We went to a coffee shop, got some money, and then went to a place to eat in the Old Quarter. It happened to be right down the street where we had spent the previous night!
I got some chinese braised beef on rice. It was probably the most delicious thing I’ve eaten in Vietnam so far. Here’s a pic:
(Yes we are drinking beers at like 10 am).
After that, we got on the bus. This bus would take us to another bus, which would take us to a boat, which would cross a river, which would take us to another bus, which would finally take us to a hotel. Quite a journey!
Here’s a picture of the bus:
Some quotes I overheard on the bus from an anonymous source:
“This bus is nicer than some hotels I’ve been at”
“I don’t wanna do anything today, I just wanna sit on this bus”
“I’ve messaged some girls that have more red flags then some soviet-bloc countries”.
Very entertaining quotes, whoever sad those ;D
Here’s Sean very suprised looking when I took a photo of him on the boat:
We finally arrive at our island. It is BEAUTIFUL. We find our room, and its on the TOP floor, floor 9. Here’s a pic with me on our balcony view:
I have a bunch of great pics on my camera I brought, I just got to try and figure how to upload them. The wifi here isn’t being cooperative.
EDIT: Here they are:
After that, we wander around for a while. We get some street food includuing crepes(YES!!) and ban my. So. Fuckiing. Good.
IF you can see the paper that it’s wrapped in, it’s like literately someone wrote on it in pen in Vietanmese. Maybe they’re recycling old homework?
Then we walked around some more, Sean bought some shorts.
We went to the Outdoor Asia shop, where we were going to figure out where to go climbing, but it was closed. The lady told us it’d open at 7 am the next day, so (today) we’re going to go check it out.
We also got some tips from some locals about things we should do — motorcycle rides, kayaking trips(to a island with monkeys), among other stuff.
Then we spent a while at a resturant (called the “Full Moon Party Hotel”) and ate a bunch of food. We asked where we could buy santa hats, and the manager there pulled some off a tree for us to have. Yes!(We payed him $5 for them which is a lot):
Also, fun sidenote, look how tiny these elevators are! We basically take up the whole elevator with our packs:
Also I found this rock in the town Square. If anyone can read Vietnamese and knows what it says, let me know:
Finally, to close out the night, we went to a really cool bar. There we met some guy from spain who was travelling for a month. He was being a little touchy to me — brushing up on my leg, sitting really close to me, throwing me glances. I don’t know what his deal was(I was just talking to him and trying to be friendly since he was alone and looked like he wanted to talk). Maybe that’s just how friendly Europeans are?
This bar was GREAT. First off, they had Hooku with the funny writing “No weed in it”:
They also had LAUGHING GAS. Yes you heard that right. You could buy it for 100k($5, expensive!), or you could get it for free with a beer between 10 and 10:30. So that’s what we did. Two giant ballons of laughing gas later — I didn’t feel much different. After holding my breath, I felt a little tingly — like if you were high on weed, minus the phycological effects. But after about 1-2 minutes it was gone. Still pretty fun though. Sean wants to go back again, so we’ll try it another day.
Here’s some more picture of food we ate. Deep friend beef spring rolls:
Here’s a funny knock-off frozen toy we found:
And finally, here’s our bathroom. It combines a toilet and a shower — not really seperate. This is pretty common in Asia, and honestly, it kinda makes sense. The whole bathroom generally is a gross place, why not just wash it off?
Okay, I’m off. Got to shower, pack, eat, and go climbing. It’s supposed to rain at 6 pm today, so I think we should be OK for climbing!