All The World In A Little Package (tour)
Dave Says:
There are those in the traveling community who frown upon package tours. In fact, Sarah and I being of independent mind and spirit also believe that one gets to experience a little more of the host country when one can interact with it the same way it’s people do. However, there are times when logistics dictates a package tour may be in order. Navigating to a remote part of north east Vietnam is one of those times.
This particular tour is a three day two night trip to beautiful Halong Bay, a series of over three thousand little islands purportedly created by the tail of a rather angry dragon as he made his way to the sea. $55 USD buys you three meals a day, a night on a boat, a night in a hotel, hiking, kayiking, site seeing and swimming if it were not quite so cold. What it doesn’t buy you is any drinks - not even water but then trading water seems to be an integral part of the Viet economy; In America its oil, in Vietnam its water. Shows you what a country thinks is important I guess.
The Vietnamese try very hard to make to the tours as good as they can given the limited resources they have but it certainly is a fledgling industry. Minibusses are old and the boats are even older. Everything gets a little spit and polish but when all is said and done, spit is just spit. What they lack in finesse they make up for in enthusiasm and enthusiasm is directly linked to competition - and competition they have in spades. Halong Bay houses about 500 tourist junks (converted from old fishing boats). Just like the roadways there is little rule or regulation on the water but unlike the roadways there is no serene zen hidden in the chaos, this is pure madness. Boats colide into each other jockeying for dock space and little tiny ancient motorboats jostle around the large boats ladden with open barrels of marine fuel - oh and everyone is smoking. Just like everything in Vietnam, things work out just fine and nobody dies 
We won’t bore you with the details of the tour, it didn’t disappoint, but we will tell you about one of the hidden benefits of package tours: you get to meet some really interesting people. Mal and Chris are Aussies and have travelled around the world several times over - Mal is 62 and isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Trina and Susannah are from Denmark and are pretty good card sharks. Kirron is a Brit living in Tokyo and there’s the Israelies, the French, the Germans - everyone with something interesting to say and everyone with hints and tips for our upcoming adventures. You can read guide books until you’re blue in face but it’s the traveller network where the good information is. So after three days of story swapping and country comparrisons, everyone said goodbye and traded email addresses and offers of accomadations if we should find ourselves in their country. If we carry on like this we could probably travel the world for free and learn a little more about it in the process.
January 21st, 2007 at 7:05 am
oh, man, it’s that kind of magic that makes life real.
these are the most robust of memories that often make the journey from point a to point b the meat. the points, then, would be the potatoes.
i suppose thigh-high fashions are dessert?
wish we were there! [but i suppose that is implied by reading and responding to posts with such obsessive prudence]