Halong, long time ago...

Dearest E-reader, long time no type. How have you been? Really? It's flared up again? You really should get it seen to. Anyway, enough idle chit-chat about your genitals, I have a point to make. That point is this, the following, here:

Please excuse the fact that these next few blogs will have about as much cultural detail as a Jackie Collins 'novel' but with twice the amount of bollocks. I'm about three months behind in the third dimension of the blogosphere and this is being reproduced from only a crusty scrap of A5 paper and my already waning memory.

Cast your mind back (or just read the post below this) and we were around about... here:

Slumping round the corner to the office that we would dump our gear at whilst off on the tour, things were looking up, like an astronomer changing a light bulb. 

Like the astronomer, we'd decided we had to look on the bright side. It was a shame, what had happened to us in Hoi An, but no one had died, for instance, and we were really excited about the trip to Halong Bay.

We dropped our bags off and bundled into the minibus ('big boys, back-of-the-bus') that would take us to the harbour. Ed and Nicky were picked up just round the corner, and we were introduced to their friends Steph and Kyle. Also on the bus were Stu, who had studied medicine at Southampton, and the lovely Katherine.

Katherine was also in medicine but should have a full time job reading children bedtime stories. Her voice was like a half-melted magnum in a bowl of custard.

The rest of the bus was filled with middle-aged American people, and two people who were a bit younger than us who lived in Ha Noi and worked for a charity there.

The harbour was rammed full of Junks, and at first glance it was hard to imagine how we were going to negotiate our way out of it onto the open sea.

To help lubricate our minds in order to work out this problem, I bought a litre of gin and a lot of tonic.

Once on the boat we had a look around; our money had been well spent. The rooms were a pretty good size and everything seemed reasonably smart. For some reason we were impressed with the table cloths.

The only problem (that we encountered on the whole trip) was that we had to pay for drinks. Any drinks. So if you wanted to have a glass of water you'd part with a dollar or two. Hence the gin.


The first day was spent sailing through the various islands, and then we had a walk through a big old cave called 'Spectacular Cave'. It was pretty vast and couldn't really be captured even by my unit of a camera, but we tried all the same.



This was by far my favourite rock.


This was Helen's. (God knows...)


Spectacular, eh?

After the caves we trekked on up and through the island. For this, we had two guides, one of whom I think must have been new.

Before we started our ascent, the more experienced guide told us to watch what we grabbed onto as there were snakes called Pit Vipers that looked a lot like the vines that were also scattered along the trek. 

At this, the newer guide visibly started to shake like a shitting dog, and throughout the walk you could hear yelps from upfront when he thought he was about to meet his maker at the hands of what was in fact shrubbery.

We mooched onwards and upwards and saw a lot of rocks and trees and not much else. We also stopped off at a lady's house, the only inhabitant on the whole island reserve, where we were told to go inside. I refused and just sort of loitered outside of it because, as I think I've stated before, I hate the voyeurism that seems to be incorporated into all of these trips. We were offered fruit and the lady received a small amount of money, but I don't see the benefit from either side, really.

The trek was hard work, especially for the older members of our group, but was definitely worthwhile once we gained a bit of height. We also got a bit of time to dip in the sea and to walk up about three hundred steps to this great lookout spot above a beach.

That night we had a few drinks and readied ourselves for the next day’s kayaking. I embarrassed myself by explaining in the dark - to who I thought was only Kyle, but was in fact the whole boat - what Danger Wanking was. Kyle thought it was funny. Everybody else thought that it was a hobby of mine.

After an early start, we kayaked off into the bay. We went to a beach that had a load of old syringes on it and the biggest spider carcass I'd ever seen and then went into a little bay that was entirely enclosed apart from a small cave that you sail through.

This was truly beautiful, and unfortunately I didn't have my camera on me for this. Suffice to say I ruined it for everybody else when I realised there was more of an echo in there than in Madonna's pants.

'I'm Old Greg' has never been shouted louder.

The rest of the day was spent eating and sailing, with a brief stop off at a fish farm that had what can only be described as great big fuck off sharks in a net, which was entertaining as the fisherman's dogs kept nearly falling in.

We finally made it back to dry land. But the land was not dry for long...