Nihn Bihn and Halong Bay, Vietnam

Another overnight bus landed us on the side of the road with no map at 6:00 AM in the rain in Nihn Bihn. Fun. We followed some other tourists to a hotel who gave us a room despite the early hour and then crashed until noon. We awoke to hunger like no other, hit the streets to find a restaurant, and were dumbfounded with the lack of food. SE Asia is all about food you see. You can't walk a block without seeing a dozen hole in the wall places offering up delicious meals. But not in Nihn Bihn. We eventually found a hotel restaurant with a sleeping waiter, overpriced food, and tiny coffees. After the grub, we had the option of renting a manual motorbike, so we quickly hired the first drivers we could find to take us to Tam Coc. Tam Coc is Halong Bay but set in brilliant green rice paddies with a river running through. We hired a boat and had 2 Vietnamese ladies row us around for 2 hours for a whopping $4. They tried too hard to sell us embroidered crap and annoyingly wouldn't take no for an answer. They got the hint eventually but persistently tapped M on the leg asking for a tip. Weird. (A note on Vietnam: The people are lovely, the sights are beautiful, the food is good, but everyone, and I do mean everyone, is out to make a buck and will lie and plea through their teeth in order to do it.) We ignored the ladies and thoroughly enjoyed being rowed under crazy limestone caves. The limestone juts straight out of the rice paddies sticking up like a sore thumb. They are a sight to see! Back in town, the rain started and we rushed back to the hotel for some quality English TV time. We caught gross dinner in our hotel restaurant and then called it a night.

LP tells us you can head to Haiphong or Halong City to arrange trips to Halong Bay. Since Haiphong was closer, we caught the local bus there. This was our first Vietnamese local bus and it was quite the trip. We either drove 1,000km or 20 km an hour the entire way and once we had crammed so many people into the bus that people were literally sitting on my feet, we stopped to pick up more. Again, dumped at some unknown location and instantly swarmed by tuk tuk drivers. Unfortunately, people don't speak English in Haiphong, and clearly we speak no Vietnamese. Arranging a boat trip of the bay was next to impossible. Many moto rides and frustrating hours later, we retreated to the bus station for a bus to Halong City, confusingly also referred to as Halong Bay(it's a city, not the bay). Again, dumpage on the side of the road, hop onto the backs of some motos and arrive at a strip of hotels. And by a strip I mean hundreds of hotels with very few tourists. Perhaps it is the low season, but there were no tourists in Halong City. Certainly not enough to fuel the rampant tourism industry and concrete buildings that make up the town. I believe this is what causes lying hotel touts offering us ridiculously overpriced bay tours. We knew enough to head straight to the harbor to catch the boats and not hire a boat for a private tour. Even so, we got followed to the harbor and lied to repeatedly about prices of trips. One scammer went as far as opening the tourist information booth, sitting us down with a piece of paper and writing out prices for us pretending as though he worked there. Of course he fell silent when asked for his identification. Beware of this if you visit Halong Bay. We did of course arrange a boat through the tourist info booth the next morning ($4, NOT $45) and had a lovely 3 hour tour of the limestone and one of the amazing caves.
Even though the caves were lit up like Disney World (weird!), and a non-English speaking local insisting on being our photographer and making us pose for a million awful photos as we cruised through the bay (see inserted photo), it was still quite a sight to see. M and I must admit though that after so much effort in getting to Halong Bay, we were not impressed. Perhaps we are jaded by the (more) gorgeous Tam Coc, or by all of the other amazing sights we have seen on this trip, but we suggest you head to Tam Coc instead for a more authentic experience.