Indochina Day 8: From Halong Bay to an Overnight Train
This morning I woke up early again to do some tai chi. Again, the experience was quite refreshing, except that I was the only one who participated this time. It was kind of disappointing, but having the whole boat to yourself is quite a liberating experience. I watched the islands pass by while some of the workers were busy preparing the ship or breakfast, but for the most part the place was very calm and relaxing.
After breakfast, we headed out to the Vung Vieng fishing village where we were given a tour of the village on one of the row boats by one of the locals.
The cruise back was a little sad, as we knew the trip was over, but still quite interesting to see as junks and boats from all over converged on the port, like some massive human migration that happens every day of the year.
Our trip back to Hanoi was on a different luxury van with a different set of people. In between, we stopped off at Yen Duc village to watch a water puppet show. We were shown some water puppets on the 9th at the Temple of Literature, but finally saw them in action here.
The rest of the trip back was fairly uneventful as I was trying to sleep. However, my sleep got interrupted multiple times by the rather large bumps in the road. Maggie mentioned at one point the driver was driving on the wrong side of the road because there was a traffic jam caused by some accident on the highway. I am glad I was asleep for that! I did notice enough of the crazy driving habits while I was awake and did my best to close my eyes and forget about it all. But as I mentioned, the road had quite a number of large bumps and one jarred my so hard that I felt as if I had pulled a muscle in my neck. I stayed away after that.
We got dropped off at the hotel so that we could pick up our train tickets. As we had time to kill, Maggie and I went to pick up banh mi from Banh Mi 25 (finally!) and some extra ones from Banh My P again (she really did like the chicken). We then tried out a restaurant that was known for their grilled fish, but the heat was really getting to Maggie, and since the restaurant was really hot, stuffy, and unoccupied, we headed back to the hotel for some recommendations.
The main criteria was that it should be close, have air conditioning, and have good Vietnamese food. We ended up going to the Green Mango which was definitely air conditioned (nice!) had decent food, who's clientele were primarily foreigners, and had prices to match. Oh well, the air conditioning was worth it.
After dinner we headed back to the hotel where we got a taxi to drop us off at the train station for our overnight trip to Da Nang. Since we could not get one of the soft sleepers, we ended up in one of the six berth hard sleepers. Our room was full of locals so we did not talk to them much as they did not speak English. I was just happy that there was air conditioning in the car. I just closed my eyes and went to sleep.
After breakfast, we headed out to the Vung Vieng fishing village where we were given a tour of the village on one of the row boats by one of the locals.
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| The Dragon Legend II. |
The cruise back was a little sad, as we knew the trip was over, but still quite interesting to see as junks and boats from all over converged on the port, like some massive human migration that happens every day of the year.
Our trip back to Hanoi was on a different luxury van with a different set of people. In between, we stopped off at Yen Duc village to watch a water puppet show. We were shown some water puppets on the 9th at the Temple of Literature, but finally saw them in action here.
The rest of the trip back was fairly uneventful as I was trying to sleep. However, my sleep got interrupted multiple times by the rather large bumps in the road. Maggie mentioned at one point the driver was driving on the wrong side of the road because there was a traffic jam caused by some accident on the highway. I am glad I was asleep for that! I did notice enough of the crazy driving habits while I was awake and did my best to close my eyes and forget about it all. But as I mentioned, the road had quite a number of large bumps and one jarred my so hard that I felt as if I had pulled a muscle in my neck. I stayed away after that.
We got dropped off at the hotel so that we could pick up our train tickets. As we had time to kill, Maggie and I went to pick up banh mi from Banh Mi 25 (finally!) and some extra ones from Banh My P again (she really did like the chicken). We then tried out a restaurant that was known for their grilled fish, but the heat was really getting to Maggie, and since the restaurant was really hot, stuffy, and unoccupied, we headed back to the hotel for some recommendations.
The main criteria was that it should be close, have air conditioning, and have good Vietnamese food. We ended up going to the Green Mango which was definitely air conditioned (nice!) had decent food, who's clientele were primarily foreigners, and had prices to match. Oh well, the air conditioning was worth it.
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| Our room for the night. There are six bunks in all. |
After dinner we headed back to the hotel where we got a taxi to drop us off at the train station for our overnight trip to Da Nang. Since we could not get one of the soft sleepers, we ended up in one of the six berth hard sleepers. Our room was full of locals so we did not talk to them much as they did not speak English. I was just happy that there was air conditioning in the car. I just closed my eyes and went to sleep.
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