Halong Bay, Vietnam

The three day trip to Halong was very cool, even though the weather was overcast and cold.

Day one was on a Junk Boat, which we headed to after a three hour bus ride. There are 500 of these boats trying to pull out of the harbor at the same time and it was chaos. I was not sure what to expect for $90 (booked out of Hanoi Backpacker) but it was a sweet setup, with rooms nicer than most hotels I have stayed at on this trip. There was a mish-mosh of fellow travellers - an older British couple, Australian girls (always), a 20 year old danish couple, an english engineer who had just quit his job and various others.

We spent most of the day cruising for caves. They are astounding. You can walk for an hour in some. Eventually they dump you back to the water, where women in rowboats try to sell you supplies. These little floating bodegas seem to be everywhere on the bay and the women are, shall we say, insistent. "YOU BUY OREO! YOU NEED OREO". They seemed genuinely shocked when I actually purchased Oreos because hey, I really did need Oreos.

There are different kinds of party nights in this world. There are the ones where you spend eight hours at a club, main-lining vodka redbulls and avoiding drunk girls with cigarettes. And then there are the ones where you drink a liter of Johnny Walker and do karaoke on a boat with strangers. Take a guess. Everyone bought a bottle and was drunk by nine, swapping stories in the main cabin.

Our hosts started the karaoke. I am not a fan of singing but scotch turns me into another person. Pretty soon the whole boat was singing the Grease megamix. The other boats floating around us had the same idea - anyone with ears could hear the echoes of "Kharma Chameleon" and "I've Got You Babe". It was an early night. Everyone was passed-out drunk by ten thirty, dreaming of a Loverboy hit.

Most people ended their trip here but I pressed on to Cat Ba Island with the older Brit couple. Our guide Hung took us off the map with an unadvertised visit to a cave in the middle of nowhere. It was discovered in 2006 and was only reachable by two longboats through calm, beautiful water. A man's body had been found when the place was discovered and the bones dated back 1,000 years. Imagine walking through a city block's worth of caves with only a flashlight and three other people. In the middle of fucking NOWHERE.

The Brits stayed in a fancy hotel. I shacked at a cool 3 star facing a bay full of fishing boats. After dinner Hung knocked on my door and told me to get my ass in gear - we were going out. But, ya know, in Vietnamese. He took me to a bar down an alley, owned by his friend and frequented by the other guides. These guys were insanely cool and suprise partiers. Several of them had never tried tequila and that was all that I needed to hear. Our (severely) broken english conversations ranged from the meritts of handjobs to the economy of southeast asia. Hung guided us home, although I am not sure how. I recall something about singing "New York, New York" at the top of my lungs.

We journeyed back to Hanoi the next day. I couldn't sell Hung out as a party animal and let him tourguide us back, although we exchanged some boozy glances. I also began calling him Hung Over, which only amused me. Back in Hanoi I checked into my own room at The Ritz Hotel for a cool $22. I plugged my dvd player into the tv and marathoned bootleg movies for the better part of 24 hours.

And now, off to Nha Trang via airplane. Meeting back up with Alec The Dogeating German.