Our Three-Day Tour

Upon arrival at our hotel in Hanoi (Vinh Quanh) we were immediately questioned about tours. We knew we wanted to visit Halong Bay and had been told and read that a tour from Hanoi was the most economical way to go. "Go now, weather is good" they said, which we also knew as we had been watching the weather keenly for the past week. Our hotel also told us that we could lock up our stuff while we were at Halong, "lockers in back, no problem," which would be great. Thinking we were now savvy to the game we declined this initial offer and went around town checking prices and asking questions. We got our low bids and went back to our hotel to see if they would match it. After a "serious" bargaining session, we got our 3 day small group tour, with kayaking and one night on the boat for $38, down from $45. With low expectations but a good price, we were satisfied with our dealings and excited to get out on the water.The morning of our trip we went down to the lobby to lock up our stuff and low and behold they didn't actually have the keys to open the lockers. But we were told we could leave our stuff in the back room. The back room was scattered with other travellers bags and two beds for the hotel workers. Seemed sketchy, but what most others were doing and the people at the hotel were very nice. Kelley said forget it and brought all of her things with her on the trip and I took out the important items from my bag and left a bit of clothes and a rain jacket. The whole situation was quite disappointing due to the fact that this was the reason to book the tour from our hotel. Anyway, our van showed up and we were carted off around town picking up our fellow travellers.The Old Quarter of Hanoi was very interesting in the fact that it seemed to get things going very late as compared to the other places we had been. At 7:30am, the relatively few vehicles in the streets were dominated by white and silver mini buses picking up people to cart them off to their varied destinations. Shops were still mostly closed up and it was even difficult to find food. Quite different than the streets of Lao and Thailand.The 3.5 hour drive form Hanoi to Halong was fine, we stopped for lunch then boarded our "Junk." The Junk, as with 95% of the boats in the bay, were more like ferries with little decorative sails. And that was if they were even to put the sails up, which none bothered.Unlike the "sailing," the bay itself was spectacular! Steep, pitted limestone islands covered with tangles of lush forest vegetation. The distant views were reminiscent of jagged mountain peaks in the Sierras, though they were surrounded by water. We motored through the bay islands, checked out some caves (more like Disneyland than natural caves, but they did have amazing formations), and were dropped off at a floating village to wait for our sleeping vessel. Twenty minutes later a much nicer boat showed up and we joined a new group of people for the evening. We cruised to a beautiful cove and anchored there for the night. The evening was great and we woke the next morning to sunrise on the water and another beautiful day.We came to port on Cat Ba Island and did a bit of hiking up to a peak and clambered up a rickety old tower for a great view. Once to Cat Ba town we started to realize our plight when the tour guide split us off from the group at lunch. We were told that we would be eating at a different restaurant for lunch and would stay at a different hotel than the rest of the group. We would also be having "free time" while the rest of the group went kayaking. It turned out, after persistently asking our guide, that our hotel actually booked us for a completely different, inferior tour and overcharged us for it as well!Lesson numbers 23, 24 and 25:Don't bargain for services, the people selling them to you are smarter than you are and you do not speak their native language; make a copy of your receipt as the tour company will take it from you when you get on the bus; and finally, go over your itinerary with your tour guide and travel agent before you leave, this is difficult to do, but if you don't you will probably get screwed at some point (ask almost anyone) and it is easy for them to pass blame on each other.So, we took the low budget meals and hotel in stride, that is what we had been doing anyway. We did however, (along with the help of the rest of the people on our trip) force the tour company to take us kayaking, which was great. We also got to stop at some devil monkey island that was nice, but the aggressive, tourist-trained monkeys were far from an appealing sight (the guide had gotten bitten the week before chasing a monkey off a stupid woman with cookies strapped to her back). We called our hotel back in Hanoi to let them know that we were upset that they had screwed us, only to have them hang up once they realized we were mad.The next day we split off from our tour and it was fantastic! We got the most beautiful room we have had over our entire trip, met some great local people (read Unlikely Teachers journal entry) and had some great food! We joined our group the next morning back to Hanoi on the "crappy bus" and with the "cheap food" and with a little forceful instance, they dropped us off grudgingly at our hotel.The throw down at the hotel also proved a mixed bag. We did get some money back our our tour "mistake" but, after 20 intense minutes of searching for my bag, I found it under the slats of a bed in the back room with two shirts missing. The hotel blamed the theft on other travellers, of course! We left them with heaps of bad karma and told everyone in the hotel not to book trips or store bags. They were pretty mad as well and we were happy to leave.We found a great hotel a few blocks away with a comedic employee who frantically yelled "Chicken Flu" everytime he sneezed. It was hilarious and a much needed break from our earlier stresses of the day.The next day we tooled around Hanoi trying to figure out trip planning. Everyone we talked to said southern Vietnam was pissin' rain and thus literally, no one had had a good time. We decided to bag the bad weather of Southern Vietnam and booked a cheap flight back to Bangkok for the next day! Sad to leave Vietnam after such a short time, but we couldn't justify heading into bad weather in hopes of a lucky break. We flew back to Bangkok on the 22nd of December with little idea on where to head from there.