As with all important ceremonies, and deciding that the embarking upon my 25th year merited such gravitas, a five day celebration was required to justify the significance of this date. As mum reminded me when she turned 24 she was already some way into a respectable vocation as a physiotherapist, had been married for over a year and was giving birth to her firstborn. So it seemed somewhat appropriate that I should spend mine unmarried, jobless, certainly nowhere near having children and spending the few pennies I own on a shamelessly self-indulgent trip around the world loosely veiled as providing me with more life experience and perhaps finding myself under a full moon in Thailand. The festivities began with a suitably debauched celebration on the Khao San Road that was in no way elegant or pretty but oodles of fun. Having met up with two Danes called Beavs (short for Beaver because that's what we thought his surname sounded when he first told us, I blame the Danish accent) and Rass (an infinitely preferable alternative to Erasmus in both length and snootiness!) the four of us decided to mark our last night in Thailand and beginning of my birthday with a couple of quiet drinks in the Bangkok Bar, a favourite haunt of ours that combines good food and drinks with the amusement of street side entertainment such as the zebra-clad Mr Thailand selling enchiladas! Several buckets of whiskey and coke from a cheap street bar on the Khao San Road that unfortunately happened to be frequented by two northern guys that give Brits Abroad their bad name and a rather portly man who was unable to place all his weight upon the tiny plastic stools and overspilled into many of our photos and the night had taken an unseemly turn that culminated in a club appropriately entitled Gulliver's Travels which was less about literary or expeditionary forays than cheap drinks, awful music and bars that turned into dancing podiums.... It perhaps wasn't the best idea given we had an early flight to Hanoi the following morning and awoke the morning after only when the bus that had come to pick us up from the hostel had departed which brought about a mighty scramble to find a taxi we could afford with the meagre remnants of our bruised wallets to race us to the airport just in time to catch our flight. We touched down in Hanoi two hours later and then had to take another taxi to cover the 29km from the out of town airport to the city centre. I had thought that the conical wicker hats associated with Vietnam were merely a touristy stereotype but everywhere we looked out of the windows people were wearing them. It was a convenient distraction to the flatness of a landscape that lends very little else to the imagination. In contrast Hanoi City was like reaching the oasis in the desert. It is a grand old French colonial style town with a huge cafe culture influenced greatly by the patisserie tradition, hurrah! We had no trouble in locating a superb lakeside cafe called Thuyts where we revived ourselves with a veritable feast of baguettes, pineapple caramel cakes (which I had been telling Liz how much I missed in the taxi journey) and tea, and I mean proper tea of the hot, unsickly variety WITH milk:) Hiren failed to meet us and so we checked into the Stars Hotel. This was the second big surprise thrown up by Vietnam. Having become accustomed to accomodation amounting to little more than a plank for a bed with a sheet for a cover it was a complete shock to be shown to a room with two grand beds, a city-facing balcony, an en-suite with shower, bath AND hot water that never ran out, not to mention a TV and kettle!!! It was certainly a joy to spend my birthday in such comfort and difficult to prise ourselves from the blankets (actual thick duvets you can nestle and hide away in!) but we went for a night time walk to familiarise ourselves with the city. We were staying in the quaint Old Quarter which is just north of the Lake, the liquid heart of the city, and home to a sprawling network of boutiques and food stalls. After the success of the Thai street food we were keen to sample the Vietnamese equivalent but where the Thais might charge one and a half times the price to a tourist (which is still dirt cheap by our standards and so you don't mind paying above) the Vietnamese are extortionate scammers usually quoting you a price 5-10 times its value so when we were quoted $10 for a bowl of soup each for a meal that probably costs 10cents to make we realised we would have to retreat to one of the numerous cafes and settle for crab soup and fresh spring rolls that you have to 'make' yourself. The following morning (my actual birthday!) we had an early start to leave our wonderful hotel room to take a two hour mini-bus ride to Halong Bay port where Liz bought me a Vietnamese hat with a most fetching pink ribbon chin strap that I was forced to wear for the duration of the day...Our boat, the Congnchia, was an old colonial junker with three decks and looked like something that had sailed right out of the Pirates of the Caribbean. The bottom deck housed our berths, the middle deck was the restaurant and 'living' area while the top deck was basically a glorified sun lounger! We trundled out of the Bay in what seemed to be a combination between dodgems and battleships as the junkers literally barged their way through each other and into the open water. The archipelago of 1900 islands is an incredible sight; everywhere you look are miniature Lost-esque islands rising up out of the green water. How you ever navigate your way around the islands is a complete mystery as if you were to drop us off in the middle I doubt we would ever be able to find our way back! Just sitting on the top of the boat soaking up the sun and the sights of this incredible archipelago which is being listed as one of the UNESCO Natural Wonders of the World could easily have taken us all day without getting bored but instead we had a couple of stop-offs to keep us busy. The first was to a gigantic cave hollowed out in what from the outside looks like an extremely large rock and which was the general consensus until 1993 when a fisherman took refuge in it from a storm and loved it so much took his girlfriend back there for a romantic frisson! It's quite impossible with words or the photos I've taken to convey the size of the cave and the extraordinary variety of stalagmites and stalagtites which have been illuminated by clever lighting to cast shadows of the most improbable things; those that spring to mind quickest are the married couple and the gigantic nipple which our guide took great delight in spotlighting to us with his torch! Unfortunately when we emerged from the depths of the caves the clouds had moved in and we got soaked making our way back to the junker, but when you get wet you can't get any wetter and so it was the pefect excuse to jump off the top deck into the sea! It was also ideal for our second stop-off which was to go kayaking around the islands. Liz and I had a two-man boat and much to her irritation the guide insisted the man take the back to steer, though my smugness was soon short-lived by the discovery that Liz assumed navigational control with directions as specific as "turn this way" without any indication as to what this way might be...Still, once we got the hang of it we were able to weave our way in and out of the islands, sailing up close to cave entrances and circling the stacks. It was amazing to get away from the big boat and feel as if you are just another tiny drop in the ocean of this labyrinthical archipelago and certainly helped us work up an appetite for dinner. Given it was my actual birthday we decided to go all out on a big celebratory meal, stopping off at a boathouse sea-fish farm where we were able to wander amongst the nets and pick our food fresh! The Vietnamese on our boat were able to help us with local tips and haggling the price (thanks Johnny and Qui!) so together with an American called Ninh we opted for: four conches, ten rock shrimps, three crabs and a kilogram of clams! The Congnchia's chef then let us into his kitchen and allow us to direct him as to how we liked the food to be prepared and a couple of hours later our feast was served as the sun dipped into the water leaving only the stars above to light us up anchored amidst the islands. The fish were also served with a variety of sides so that by the time we managed to clear the deck it was an effort to climb up to the top deck to star-gaze until my birthday faded away. The following day, after another gigantic breakfast in the sun, we had to say good bye to our junker and trade water for land as we moved into the only inhabitable island in the archipelago, Cat Ba where we began our trek into the National Park. Given that there was a seventy-year old lady in flipflops amongst our numbers we naively assumed that we would be ok to continue in our flipflops, which might have been true had the heavens not decided to open on the descent (somehow I seem to have accrued an incredible knack of choosing to trek in torrential rain...) The climb up was steep and involved plenty of rock-hugging and ladders across ravines and the peak itself was marked by an ugly, rusting watch tower designed by the navy to keep a lookout for invaders. Climbing the tower was way more terrifying than any other part of the trek but well worth the hike as it offered a beautiful panorama from the heart of the archipelago. Having safely negotiated our way back down in buffeting winds that seemed destined to whip the tower off the peak and begun our descent the rain came lashing down, washing away any footsteps and turning the path into a slide that our flipflopped feet stood no chance of gripping. At this point I would just like to state that the misleading figure of the seventy year old woman had left the trek as soon as it started to ascend to continue the gentler forest walk that would lead her to meeting us back at the starting point....We eventually emerged into a shelter covered from head to toe in mud where we waited out the storm before heading back to the bus to take us to our hotel. We had lunch provided in the hotel restaurant...next to a 30-strong group of Vietnamese who were clearly celebrating something which involved multiple shots of rice wine and much chanting while occasionally casting us bemused looks as to why we were amongst them. Later on when we returned for the night meal at the hotel and when the party had suitably quenched their thirst we became ingratiated into their group by the simple virtue of originating from a country that had, in their mind, produced the best football teams in the world. Every time I said the word Lampard or Ronaldo they would all cheer and toast me with rice wine!? We had a brief siesta before setting sail again to go to "Monkey Island" named funnily enough after its overpopulation of monkeys, who far from being cute and photographic are vicious and highly territorial. The island was small and we eschewed the golden sandy beach and green waters to opt for the rock climb to the highest point of the island. Having scaled the Cat Ba peak earlier in the day this hike looked like a doddle, the tor was barely a couple of hundred metres high and so we set off into the jungle enjoying the novelty of abseiling up the rocks and having to carry a monkey-beating stick, just in case...However our adventurous spirit seemed to get the better of us and instead of taking the languid, winding route we decided to forge our own way, directly up! Suddenly the rocks turned into jagged spikes that sliced open our hands as we held onto them and required the most acrobatic of contortions in order just to cling onto their faces and scrape our way around. Having ascended the peak which did provide incredible vistas the mountain claimed the life of one of Liz's flipflops making the descent almost impossible for her given the viciousness of the rocks. With the aid of two shoed Germans who stumbled upon us in our hour of need we did manage the de-scale with only the bare minimum of injuries.
When we finally got back to the beach with our lesson well and truly learned we gave in to our true tourist desires and flopped on the white sand and swam in the green sea before climbing back aboard our boat and being taken to the hotel. The birthday bonanza was rounded off with another ginormous seafood platter and a leisurely stroll around the illuminated harbour. It was the perfect birthday celebration combinig the party atmosphere of Bangkok with the beauty of one of the world's most incredible natural sights that hopefully marks the beginning of an eventful 25th year!
FAVOURITE PLACE: Congnchia boat!
FAVOURITE FOOD: The seafood extravangaza birthday meal that caused us to nearly sink the boat...Thuyt's pineapple caramel cake:)
WORST PLACE: Green House, with it's flooding showers and non-working ac....especially as Thai's don't believe in recompense or discounts...
WORST FOOD: Soup for breakfast...what?
WHAT I'M GOING TO MISS: Feeling like you're in the middle of nowhere when sitting on top of a junker in Halong Bay as the sun goes down and all you can see is the dusty islands fading into the gloom. Picking your dinner, fresh!
WHAT I'M NOT GOING TO MISS: Brits abroad on the Khao San Road - no wonder everyone hates us abroad! Whiskey buckets, enough said...Managing to trek in torrential rain, EVERY time...
MOST BIZARRE: The giant nipple stalagmite! The legend behind Hoam Kiem Lake in which the sword used by the 15th century Emperor to drive out the Chinese was swallowed by a giant gold tortoise that disappeared with it into the lake giving the water the name of Lake of the Restored Sword and leading to many people believing the waters still hold giant tortoises - the Vietmanese Nessy!
FAVOURITE QUOTES: Sam: "Liz, get up, we've missed the bus and our flight leaves in an hour", Liz: "Sorry, I can't, I've got to go to a museum."; "Mi scuzi!"; "He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past." (Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez); "...human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves" (Love in the Time of Cholera)
BOOKS I'VE READ: The Quiet American, Graham Greene (Fell asleep during the film - remember ML?! - but when we arrived in Vietnam thought I should at least attempt to read it. Fortunately it was much better than the film but not quite the glimpse into the country I was hoping for; Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (slightly odd reading a book about South America in Vietnam but a classic Marquez novel about an elegaic forbidden love story that only reaches fruition in the fingertips of death)
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