Viet-names

And now, back to Vietnam again. In general, we didn’t love Hanoi. We found getting around the city both hazardous and stressful, due mostly to the motorbikes(!!!). However, there were more than a few additional quirks that made Hanoi challenging. For instance, there are apparently no laws preventing one from swiping the name of a successful restaurant or travel agency, and slapping that name onto your restaurant or travel agency on the very same street. This reality hit us pretty hard on our first night in Hanoi.

We booked an overnight boat trip to Ha Long Bay, a lovely waterway dotted with karst mountain formations, through a travel agency recommended in our guidebook. We then strolled further down the street to find 5 or 6 other agencies with the same name, presumably one being the actual agency listed in the guide. Since we had booked the trip already the decision was made, so we put it out of our minds and walked to a restaurant that had been recommended by some friends we met in Lijiang. When we arrived, we found 3 or 4 restaurants with the same name and exact same sign. We picked one and the food was OK, but the uncertain feeling of possibly being scammed did tarnish the experience a bit.

This was nothing compared to the tarnishing that would occur on our boat tour the next day. I won’t go through it in detail, because it wouldn’t be much fun. Instead, I’ll draw up a list, which is by no means comprehensive:

1. Our promised “English-speaking tour guide” apparently learned his English through a cursory perusal of his Vietnamese-English dictionary on the bus ride.

2. The “English-speaking tour guide” apparently also didn’t know Vietnamese well enough to be able to figure out where his boat was moored, leading to a tour of all the piers at the Ha Long Bay departure dock (while carrying our big packs).

3. When I say the food was inedible, you have to understand that these days I eat just about anything, with the exception of broccoli (sorry Mom; although if it makes you feel better I don’t eat it with ketchup anymore). If asked the question of whether our food on the boat was animal, vegetable, or mineral, I might ask for more options.

4. The room on the boat where we stayed was absolutely infested with roaches. Roaches everywhere. A roach smorgasbord. On the bright side, they might have been an improvement on the food if you could catch them.

5. I jumped on a jellyfish. While this wasn’t strictly the fault of the tour operators, I’m lumping it in anyway. I’m a jellyfish magnet. They love me. I have a feeling that somewhere, there’s an annual secret BOJAM (Brotherhood of Jellyfish and Mosquitoes) meeting, at which the only agenda item is to renew the ongoing assault on my bloodstream. The meeting is then concluded by the banging of the world’s tiniest gavel, followed by Aaron’s-blood cocktails.

All that bitched about, the sights as the boat puttered through the bay were beautiful, and we even had a nice sunset. In short, should you ever go to Vietnam, go to Ha Long Bay, but do make sure you check the address of your tour provider first.