坐火车旅行Pt 1!Well that was... an experience.
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Just made it to Dali 大理 in western China's Yunnan 云南 province. Dali Bai Minority Autonomous Prefecture 大理白族自治州, autonomous means the prefecture chairman is elected from the Bai minority group and the prefecture can design its own police structures and economic rules, though they have to put everything by Beijing first, apparently. Since leaving for Halong Bay in Vietnam on Sunday I have not removed any clothing. (Just giving you some context here.) From Wednesday through till today we've been travelling by sleeper train and bus, across approximately ~800 miles of Vietnam/Chinese countryside. 10 minutes ago I had a shower. It was a very good moment. *basks*
Sunday-- We left the hostel at 8am, charitably. We booked a tour around Halong Bay for three days and the tour guide managed to wake up at 8, so we spent a while in the hostel atrium slowly realising that the type of people who go to Halong Bay are, there is no other phrase for it, Gap Yah. When the guide 'Everrrryone A'm Josh' finally turned up he checked everyone's names and, after struggling to pronounce 'Anya', ranted, in a stoned manner, about what a ridiculous name it was. This confused me because he had no problem with some of the Australian names, which seemed to be a collection of vowels hashed together (Can you tell I didn't like Josh?). Somehow ~45 people were crammed in to minibuses and after a three hour ride we arrived at the port/ ticketed entrance to find one of the boats on fire. A crowd of Vietnamese were gathered to watch the boat's bum sink slowly in to the water, amusingly they were standing underneath a massive billboard preaching against smoking in Halong Bay. The fire wasn't caused by smoking though, it was some burnt pork apparently.
Josh managed to lose half the group going through the turnstiles, though we managed to find the right boat, after wrestling our way past an American lady with a Zimmer-frame of course. Those steps were really not built for old people -_-
The Jolly Roger (imaginative) had bedrooms on the lowest level, a bar (*groan*) on the second then the third level was apparently used for sun-bathing in warmer weather. As warm as Hanoi had been, Halong Bay was quite chilly, so I added more jumpers then hid in bed for the first hour (sociable). Several guys jumped off the top deck when the boat stopped, but everyone of them re-surfaced shrieking (attractive in a guy), so no one else jumped in after that (except for one Gap-Yah who wanted to wander around in a bikini -_-).
Kayaking occurred soon after, which was REALLY FUN. The group went around some of the smaller rocks, before landing in a wee cave. The cave was pretty huge, with a beach in the front. Admittedly the beach was covered with broken bottles, but some of us went further in to the back, which was not only clean of bottles, but also had a great echo. One of the girls took pictures so that the flash would light our way ^^ – The rest of the night was spent listening to my mp3 player loudly, trying to drown out the sound of drunk people falling over and yelling loudly.
Monday-- So, after minimal sleep (which I am resigned to, Lou is less tolerant) and with the complete lack of a tour guide (Josh being passed out from drinking -_-), the group divided in to people going back on the boat and people heading to “Castaway Island”... yes.
The island was a small beach with huts, dogs and Vietnamese party men -_____- The huts were basically rooves held up with posts and crates for the floor. In summer I can see this being very cooling at night, for us the final night ended in accumulating as many duvets as were available.
Lou and I signed up for rock-climbing, which was out-sourced to another company so we escaped Josh for a few hours. There was an Australian couple climbing with us, one of whom was a very good climber, the other was a reluctant participant scared of heights The leader knew a lot about Halong Bay (more so than our tour guide, anyway), and there was a Vietnamese guy called Din who climbed all the walls/ cliff faces first to attach the ropes. We knew he was serious about one of the faces when he took off his sandals... Seeing as there were only four of us, the leader let Lou and I do a few extra climbs (^^) I had a pair of mittens with me, so I fared better than the other three, as the rock was only so climber-friendly because it was jagged and looked like spikey, rock porridge. So far my hands have still not healed and eventually the hard-core Australian fell off the final climb (after three attempts, it must be said) because her hands were shredded Whilst she was climbing cliff faces, us three on the ground were chatting about Australia's many poisonous animals. Australia is cool.
That night ended with a bonfire on the beach, when the tour guide on the island started throwing stools in to the pit -_-
Tuesday --The drunken, crazy, hippy group left around 8am, most of the couples who'd been on the tour seemed quite happy they were leaving (must be a certain type of drunk, single person who enjoys this thing). We were going to steal a kayak and bugger off for the day around the islands, but we'd had a wee go at that the day before and it was cold... so we appropriated some more duvets and hid until the next lot of drunken weirdos arrived. Surprisingly the lot that came were actually rather fun, including the new tour guide, who was called James and was actually acting like a guide (hooray!)
Apparently as soon as the boat hit the beach, Dragon, an English guy who's just left Nanning 南宁 after a year of teaching, vomited, to which Dylan, a 19-yr old Australian, responded “Take that Nature, one nil.” ← these guys were way cooler than the last lot, not only were there fewer of them, so we all got extra duvets (or “dooners” as the Ozzies called them), but the guys were not Gap Yah jocks and the girls (Clueless, Blue and Big-D) were 26, so could hold a conversation about things other than alcohol. In summary I really enjoyed that last day, really wish those guys had been around from the start.
The evening was spent playing drinking games, watching one of the 26-yr olds give the 19-yr old a lap dance, then slowly clinging to each other as the night got colder. Lou clung to one of the Ozzies so much they woke up in the same hut together. Apparently their clothes were in the tour guide's hut though. Enough said.
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