Excuse me...

Is the phrase I have undoubtedly heard the most of over the past 3 days. Our "very experienced" "English-speaking" tour guide to Halong Bay opened every statement with "excuse me". I gained the ability to hear her across a crowded room as it was so piercing to my ears.

I've learned some more about cultural differences, I think. Either that or we were just on a crummy tour. From the beginning of our 3 day trip we were given limited information about what was coming up next or what we needed to be prepared for. Sam thinks that this is a fundamental difference in how things are approached here vs. the western world, or at least my world. I like to have a schedule, and know where I need to be and what I need to plan for. On the tour, we would be told to be somewhere at a certain time, but with no information about what we'd be doing or what we needed for the activity. These were things we had to pry out of our guide, who was very frustrated with us and barely understood us half the time. NONETHELESS, we had a good time and I enjoyed the experience. Halong Bay is beautiful and we were able to enjoy it from our boat, a kayak, atop a peak within a national forest, and wandering the harbourfront in the evening.

Here is a short list of questions I've compiled for anyone wishing to take a Halong Bay trip with one of the many operators out of Hanoi:

1) In my A/C boat cabin are there specific hours of operation for the A/C? We were allowed into our rooms at 1pm, but not given the remote to operate the A/C until 9pm (when I had long sleeves on outside on the deck). When I awoke at 7am the A/C was off and the remote was no longer functional.

2) Will there be assigned seating at meals? We were seated for each meal for 3 days with 3 Germans (a mother, her son and his friend) who were able to speak English but spoke through the meals in German. They were very nice people but pretty much ignored us all during the meals.

3) When you say we will be going kayaking, does that mean we'll be going to the beach? We kayaked to Monkey Island and once we got there were told we were hanging out there for an hour and going back. Luckily a few of us wore bathing suits, but nobody brought towels since we'd assumed we'd be IN the kayaks.

4) Does Monkey Island have monkeys we can see? Not really, and they bite, so be careful.

5) Does the hotel we will stay at for the night we're not on the boat have a curfew? Luckily (I guess) the town was pretty dead so we didn't want to stay out late, but were a bit bummed to hear we were on high-school style rules.

I'm not bitter, really, I'm not, just a bit bummed that things didn't turn out exactly like we'd expected them to. On the upside, today our assigned seating at lunch was with 3 young Cambodians who were just about to begin studying law in Vietnam. It was fascinating to talk with them about Cambodia, and they reinforced my highly positive impressions of the Cambodian people.

Tomorrow (Sunday), Sam and I part ways (tears!) when I head off on a night train to Sapa. She leaves the next morning for Bangkok and then back to NC. I'll be halfway through my trip and in search of new travel buddies. I've met a few ppl who are going to Laos, though, so we may meet up!