Catching up with Halong Bay!

Hello my friends. Since I am having a bit of a quiet time now, due to a lack of will to live... (just kidding!!) no, better said: due to soreness and laziness, I can recall past memories and catch up with unfinished stories. We went to Halong Bay quite a long time ago, now (it seems...). It was a 3 days trip from Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam. There was a few of us, on a very beautiful wooden boat (I wanted sails but it was out of our budget!), with a restaurant were they fed us very tasty vietnamese specialities! (it was mainly fish! every day!! and rice, of course, how to forget it, and the spring rolls! they were tasty!), we started a trip around this amazing scenery! it is basically full of rocks, this Bay, and they are pointy and there are many of them, and I think (if I understood our tour guide right [her English sounded very much like vietnamese to me, and to all of us I must say...]), the story is that in vietnamese imagery these rocks look like the scales of a dragon? or something like that...

The truth is that they are very impressive, and it is a very beautiful site to sail around. Visited some cave... and arrived at Cat Ba Island, where we spent the first night. Very nice island too, fishing villages, lovely beaches hidden behind the jungle, only accessible by a walkway around the cliffs! In the morning I did some trekking to explore the insides of this island (the girls were too lazy and decided to have beach time instead). The highlight of our trek was the heat! I don't think I have sweated as much, it felt like melting! It was a hot day and a steep climb... quite cool because there was no proper ways, we had this boy from the village leading us, but sometimes it was hard to tell that there was a way, with so much vegetation, and rocks and ups and downs...
Afterwards was the best: we went to the beach and that was heaven!! a well deserved swim!

Then back to the boat (pretty busy, you know? always pushing us around, these people!), for our second night!!!! it was my first night on a boat! on a proper room as well, with a bed!!! tiny rooms but with all mod cons! The upper deck was our favourite place, though, you could see all the view and you got a breeze! In the evening we still had time for kayaking around some lagoons, you had to pass under a cave to access them, how cool is that! and there was a floating village! the people from the village were selling stuff from boats to the ships (they had all the favourite western delicacies, even Pringles!!!) and when I saw a bottle of red wine I could not resist the temptation!!! And that was what started all the trouble! all my fault!!! poor me!! I bought the bottle and the captain came running and shouting at me in vietnamese, really angry!! apparently, as I found out afterwards, you can only buy alcohol from the boat! company policy! but by then all the tourists (who had been drinking all afternoon alcohol that they bought before, on the deck!) were upset and started arguing back with the captain!! I did not know what to do with myself! all would have been sorted if I had payed 5$ but the other tourists (silly boys) would not have it! oh my Bhudda!!! If only I had known that I was going to cause so much havoc!

Nevermind, at the end it all resolved quite succesfully: we all got drunk together at night!! and the captain was quite happy to share the wine I bought and he even invited us to his own rice whisky. And he got quite a liking for me, kept kissing my hand all night!!! so, maybe the whole argument brought us all together, although the silly boys were still silly.... ah well! another story to tell...