The Bro Trip

Finally!! After a couple of weeks of sightseeing cities, suburbs, museums, nightlife, mountains, streets and restaurants by walking, running, taxi, buses and motorbikes we finally arrived at (one of many to come) destinations having what we believe is one of the true essences of what The Bro Trip is all about - BEACHES!!!

But, first of all we have to tell you about our culinary experience in Hanoi the night before we left. We had dinner at a restaruant called Highway 4, a restaurant famous for having lots of wierd out-of-the-ordinary meals. After looking through the menu, we ordered sautéd buffalo, sautéd ostridge and some spring rolls. That was far from the wierdest thing on the menu though. They had stuff like Roasted pidgeon with salt, locusts roasted with lemon leaves and stuff like that. Feeling we should try something we haven't tried before, we also ordered roasted crickets in pig fat, served with shrimp crackers. :D It wasn't that bad actually!


Roasted crickets in pig fat. We had antennas between our teeth after the meal!

Anyway, we now reside in a bungalow on the island of Cat Ba, in Ha Long Bay, northern Vietnam. Palm trees & lush mountains surrounding us, hammocks and about 20 metres to the beach. Hakuna matata baby! We got here yesterday, after a really long day. The trip here didn't really turn out as expected though. Got up around 6:30 in our hotel in Hanoi. Took a taxi to the bus station ticket booth, where the ticketlady pointed us in another direction. We didn't really get why, but we went looking for a bus to Hai Phong, a city on the coast in Halong Bay. Some guy then showed us to a bus and told us the price to Hai Phong was 70.000 dong (about 23 swedish kronor). We were like: "Sure, why not!"

The bus left the station, and about 5 minutes later the ticket guy tried to rip us off Vietnam style: the guy in front of me gave the ticket guy 250.000 dong, which the ticket guy then showed me, saying the ticket price was 250.000 (by pointing on the money), instead of 70.000 as the other guy told us. We totally refused, knowing that the vietnamese people in general take every chance they get to sell stuff at way too high prices to tourists. The ticket guy finally gave up, and took our 70.000. I (Marcus) a few minutes later saw him secretly (he thought) give 200.000 dong back to the guy in front of me since he didn't succed in fooling us. Crafty, sneaky bastards.


Hoping we will end up where we planned on the bus from Hanoi! We didn't...

After 1 hour (the bus tour was supposed to be 2 hours) we got thrown of the bus in the middle of nowhere. We never really understod why, but we guess the bus was heading for Ha Long or some other place, or, that they just didn't like us. :P Soooo, there we were, on a highway in northern vietnam. Luckily, there was a bus stop nearby, and a guy we could ask (using sign language and the few english words he knew) to get on a new bus, that took us to Hai Phong!

Once in Hai Phong, we jumped into a taxi and told him "Pha, to Cat ba" (pha means ferry). After like 15 kilometers, we reached the ferry. It really didn't look like the tourist ferry though, but we bought a ticket and were on our way! After two ferry transfers and one motobike-ride through a remote island to another ferry we realized that we really did not take the tourist route. But it was worth the hassel, cause the last motorbike-ride took us on winding roads with magnificent views of the Cat Ba island coastal line. It was amazing to see, and in Cat Ba town 45 kilometers later, we reached our bungalow sanctuary!!


Coastal line of Cat Ba from the motorbike.


The beach 20 metres from our bungalow!


The good life.

We are now writing this blog update at an internet cafe in town and will probably hang here and check out what's up with the Cat Ba nightlife after dinner! After that, I think we'll just kick back with some beer on the beach by our bungalow :)

Later!

M&C