Welcome to Halong Bay, Professor Hawking

I survived the Halong Bay boat tour. The one I had booked through the hostel was the infamous booze cruise on Halong Bay, the boat renowned for it's party. The first day we were picked up at the hostel in the morning, then took a four hour bus to the Halong Bay pier, where we boarded our boat and starting chugging into the bay. The boat itself was nicer than I expected; the rooms were had comfortable beds and hot showers, and the dining room was nicely decorated. After spending time jumping off the top deck of the boat (and slowly conquering my fear of heights) and kayaking around the bay into some caves, we all hit the sauce. The drinking games administered by the tour guide were epic, and with thirty of us playing, good times were had by all. The best one was playing the circle of death, where you draw a card from the circle and every card has a different rule attached to it. The best one of all was the five card, the Stephen Hawking card, where you had to act like Stephen Hawking and have the people beside you feed you drinks. I had so much fun, I spent all the money I brought with me. All of it. On booze.

The next day was the rough part. After partying all night (4am for me, some people didn't go to sleep) the boat staff woke us up at 7am for breakfast and to start the day. Half of us that were signed up for the second night left the boat and headed to an island owned by the hostel tour company. It was basically a small strip of beach with towering limestone cliffs on either side, kinda reminded me of the area around Krabi in Thailand. I tried my hand at some wake boarding, but unfortunately because my shoulder was acting up and because the water was cold as shit I never managed to get out of the water. After getting a three hour nap to top off my two hours, we had dinner and went right back to the drinking games, this time in the form of a giant Jenga tower. This night wasn't as late, 2am. Some people stayed up until 6am. We then departed the island, had lunch on the boat, then headed back to Hanoi.



One totally off topic thing I saw coming into Hanoi that I thought was hilarious was passing by a quaint little shop that had a piece of paper taped in the window with the words 'Seven Eleven', not 7-11. I guess they figured that Westerners would see that sign and make some kind of mental connection to home, convincing them they should shop there. I think they got it a little twisted. Anyways, tomorrow I have my night train to the Chinese border, where hopefully right after I cross I'll be heading to Yuanyang, where I can see some monumental rice terrace scenery.

EDIT: While I'm not sure of the status of China's ongoing feud with Google, I (and you) have to be prepared for the fact that I might not be able to access Google (and thus my blog) while I'm in China. I will, however, do my best to get my posts out there, but if it turns out to be impossible, I'll try to post them on Facebook, if that's also not banned.