Vietnam – Ha Long Bay

I was originally going to post these photos from our day trip to Ha Long Bay with the other photos from Hanoi, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of these beautiful scenes getting buried amongst the street photos.

We woke up at about 7AM to eat breakfast and hop on a bus that drove us around Hanoi, stopping at other hotels to pick up fellow tourists who booked a day trip to Ha Long Bay. After driving about 2 hours out of the city, we arrived at the boat port where we hopped onto a ferry. We were served lunch, then headed onto the upper deck to view the scenery while our guide gave us an interesting lesson on the history of the bay and how it got its name. Due to the shapes of the peaks and their spacing in the water, the name “Ha Long” was given, meaning “descending dragon”. We also stopped on an island to explore the famous caves of Ha Long, which was filled with stalactites and stalagmites. We spent the taking photos and chatting with some new friends we made during the boat ride, and it was working out to be a great day. That is, until we were sort of held ransom.

Our final stop on the trip was at a tiny floating village on the water. We disembarked from our ferry and were ushered to small row boats big enough for 1 rower and 4 passengers. About 5 rowboats set out together towards the tunnels that led to new sections of the rock formations. The rowers were locals who couldn’t speak English, but quietly rowed us along. At one point, we were taken through a tunnel into a cave. The rowers of the boats started singing, lightly rocking the boats. They looked at each other and did something peculiar – they started taking out money and were waving it around as if to show each other how much they had been tipped that day. We, along with our friends in our boat, looked at each other in confusion, then looked at our rower. She just stared at us with a face that said “Well, what are you waiting for ? Pay up!” We quickly discussed amongst ourselves, saying that we had ALL been planning to give them a nice tip when we returned to the docks. Such is the usual custom anywhere, we had planned to tip AFTER the service had been given, not during. We looked around and realized that our tour mates had all been subject to the same treatment, but had much more quickly forked up their pocket change. The most surprising was realizing that the other boats had started heading back out of the cave while ours stayed still. We quickly gathered some money, approximately $20 worth, and gave it to our rower. She had the audacity to take the cash, roll her eyes and scoff, then shoved it in her pocket and begrudgingly started rowing us out of the cave. As we headed back towards the dock, our lady became quite chatty with the other rowers, and we gathered from the the looks they were throwing that we were probably being called cheapskates, literally behind our backs. We felt bad since we thought we were maybe missing something cultural about the etiquette for tipping, so we gathered another $20 and give it to the woman. She gave a half-hearted smile and took us back to the dock. To top it off, the man who helped us out of the boat was VERY firm in telling us “Make sure you tip them.” Clearly, he wasn’t in the know about the little dance they were playing with their guests.

This experience definitely left a bad taste in our mouths, but the scenery and resulting photos made it worth it. I feel for those women and understand that they don’t have much, but I’d be willing to give so much more if they didn’t show such hostility. Regardless, I hope you enjoy the photos below, and be sure to check out the other photos from our Vietnam trip!