I spent the morning exploring Sydney, but after getting very fed up caring a 12kg backpack around decided to head towards the Gardens Point Navy Base early, which was our point of departure. My first impression of the boat was that it was a lot smaller than I was expecting.
Since I was a few hours early, I spent some boring time waiting and eventually ran into Lauren who was also on the youth crew.
images: 2011-08-02-halong-bay/P1080464.jpg
We got a bus from Hanoi to Halong, and were joined by some other travellers, most of which were from Australia except for 3 people from New Zealand. Our guide Viet informed us that if we were lucky we might still be able to stay the night on the bay, and that they were making some calls, but that it was up to the government as they had closed the bay to all boats as a safety precaution.
I really hated Hanoi. It was so cramped, dirty, smelly and hot. So hot in fact that Tom and I even came back to the hotel for the middle of the day to get out of the heat.
Unlike the other cities we visited, we spent ages on the first day trying to find a cheap place to find some descent food. We expected it to be much like Saigon, but prices were a lot higher here.
Our next destination was to be Hue, but this time we got to take the scenic route rather than fly.
First up, we were taken to the marble mountains which had a massive stone staircase to the top, at which there was various temples and Buddhist shrines.
There was a massive cave which was used in the war to hide from the American troops. There was a hole in the ceiling where it had been bombed during the war.
Upon arriving in Hue, we had a quick walk around the city in the afternoon to see what there was to do, and made our way to the markets. They were rank, they really even worse than the one at Hoi An, which is saying a lot. We really couldn’t find anything interesting to see, so we booked a tour for the next day to the outlying areas, as we hadn’t planned anything and didn’t no what else there was to do.
After flying from Saigon, we arrived in Danang International Airport. It was about the size of Rockhampton airport but super dodgy looking for an ‘international’ airport.
Our driver took us to Hoi An, and on the way we picked up our tour guide (that we did not know that we had paid for). Our guide recommended a place to get some suits made, so we headed there first. We went to a tailor called Blue, and got fitted for our suits.
We arrived in Saigon to see our driver out the front of the airport with a sign with our names on it, which was a bit of a luxury. However, we had barely even read the sign before he waved at us and walked off, looking back every now and then to make sure we were following. Then he pointed at the taxi pick up zone and disappeared. We were still trying to remember what he looked like when he came back with the car and we got in - it was pretty funny watching Tom trying to make small talk with the guy, as he didn’t speak any English and had no idea what we were saying.
After going on a 12 hour flight from Zurich to Hong Kong, a 5 hour layover and then another 9 hour flight to Brisbane… I was pretty buggered. As I couldn’t fly back to Rockhampton that afternoon I stayed the night with some of the Brisbane boys. Thanks to Anthony, Quentin, Jordan and Dom for letting me stay. Somehow I managed to stay awake until around 9.00 at night to try and get my body clock back in sync, at which point I basically passed out.
Well I figured that I should probably finish off the tale of my trip to Switzerland, for the sake of completeness, even though it is now ages ago and nobody will probably read this.
New Years Eve was a great night, and we had an amazing Raclette dinner at the flat. After dinner we caught the train into Zürich to see the fireworks, but even before that there was some as the people in the flat next door were letting some small ones off.
Yesterday I went to Alpamare with some people staying at our flat for New Year (family of Nelly). It is basically like Wet-n-Wild except mostly indoor, which is good considering there was snow in the outdoor parts.
The slides were incredible fun, I enjoyed it much more than Wet-n-Wild. One slide called the Thriller was completely pitch-black for the whole way which was kind of scary the first time as the turns and drops came out of nowhere.
