Soap Opera Royalty

I woke up this morning at 6:00 am before my alarm went off. I got dressed, grabbed an egg sandwich, and got onto our group’s bus. At 7:00 we embarked on our trip to “Dry Ha Long Bay,” which meant that we visited Toa Cac and Hoa Lu without doing any swimming. It was really cloudy outside and the bus ride (with a tourist shop/bathroom stop in the middle) took until 9:00 am, when we pulled into a small guest house. They let us use a bathroom in one of the rooms and then we headed down the street to a place where there were a bunch of steel “canoes.” As usual, I went with DiDi and two women who paddled our boat. We pretended to both be American and to only speak English, since the Vietnamese boat woman terrorized DiDi for more money on our last trip. They didn’t like us, though, because we just didn’t want to buy any of the linens or drinks they were selling to us. We sat there for an hour and went through three cool caves, I took some pictures, and then we hit the end and some other woman grabbed onto our boat and demanded we buy drinks from her. I was glad when she let us go after about ten minutes and then it was another hour-long boat ride back to the dock. It was just another awkward experience in Viet Nam and I was so glad to get off the freakin’ boat. We then had a group lunch of rice, goat, vegetable soup, fried fish, spring rolls, and Coke. At 1:00, we all stood in line for the bathrooms again before getting back on the bus.

I slept on DiDi for the hour-long bus ride to Viet Nam’s ancient capital in Hoa Lu. It was the country’s capital for 42 years at the beginning of the late 10th and early 11th century. The king wanted the capital to be there because it was surrounded by limestone mountains that would protect them from the Chinese invaders. After literally being attacked and asked to buy things, we saw the temples for the two kings that ruled at the ancient capital before it was moved to present-day Ha Noi. They had some great stories to accompany them as well. The first king was killed by his cook after the guy had a dream where he swallowed a star, which he took to mean that he would be the next king. They then fetched a huge drum and beat it once every time they cut off a chunk of the murderous cook’s flesh. After the first king was killed, his wife moved on and married the second king. Then they even moved her statue to the temple for the second king. Why not just make two statues? Good times in medieval Viet Nam.

We saw both temples and then a group of us climbed almost 300 steep stairs up this mountain. The two kings were buried there and I lit a little incense thing and stuck it in the sand in front of the big blocks of stone. I then walked a bit farther, got some nice pictures (well the white sky kind of ruined most of them) and then walked back down. On the way down the many steep stairs, I was accosted by about ten drunk Vietnamese men who demanded to take my picture with them. I distanced myself from them in the picture and made a really funny face too. Thankfully, I went down to the bus and immediately fell asleep in the relative safety found there (they couldn’t sell us stuff there!) and the ride lasted from 3:30-6:00, when they dropped us off around the corner from the dorm. I waited for a bit and then DiDi, Leah, and Jackie and I went to our rice buffet. I ate my usual rice, peanuts, sprouts, and egg and then got back to my dorm room at 7:00. I have been sitting here writing this blog and talking to Jill for an hour and then I showered. I’m going to continue to wrestle with the intermittent wireless internet and then go to Jackie and Leah’s room to do my final photography portfolio.