Rather than bother with getting up at 0600 for tai chi (bang bang bang on the door, GOOD MORNING!) on the “sun deck” (we haven’t seen any sun since arriving, and the steel blanket smothering the sky is getting a bit depressing), we took in an extra few blissful hours of sleep, waking occasionally to watch the mist-wreathed islands pass by our magnificent window front. We didn’t even manage to join the island tour to visit a cave, but hey, we’ve seen caves before, even kayaking under two of them the previous day, but sleep….man.
Our trip back was uneventful, as soon as the driver (two of them this time) actually showed up. Affable enough fellows, although stopping at one of the very touristy souvenir and marble carving shops along the way for them to have a quick lunch got us grimacing and pointing at our watches a bit. Turns out the place is actually some sort of workshop for the disabled, although the cynic in me wonders whether the various drivers get a free lunch for depositing tourists on the way back from Ha Long. Hey, no objection to charities being profitable.
Unfortunately, tickets for the water puppet show haven’t worked out, as it’s apparently booked out for many days in advance, but the staff of the Hanoi Elegance 4 have been magnificently helpful in all other regards, offering various transfers, assisting with luggage without asking, and generally providing an exceptional level of service. Missing the puppet show wasn’t that much of a loss, as it has allowed us to do a bit of shopping for warm clothes. We are by no means the only group of travelers who utterly failed to do their research and realize that the winter monsoon actually brings cold weather to Northern Vietnam. Tropical country, right? Warm, right? Sunshine, right? Even given that the locals don’t seem accustomed to anything below 20 degrees and swaddle themselves in fake Chinese down jackets, it can still get chilly. Wonder what Sapa holds — we’ve been hearing enough horror stories about how freezing it is up there.
Unfortunately, the Vietnamese we’ve encountered in shops and street stalls thus far don’t seem to really have gotten the gist of the whole negotiation and bargaining thing. A lot of descriptions about the country that we’ve seen underscore the point that Northerners appear to see themselves as guardians of culture and philosophical thought, while Southerners are the stylish, cosmopolitan merchants. The Northerners don’t like the Southerners for being decadent and shallow, and the Southerners dislike the Northerners for being a bunch of commie bumpkins. The folks from the center feel that the capital is still in Hue, and that they are thus superior to the rest of the place, while being roundly detested by both North and South. And thus it goes.
However, as for commerce, the modus operandi seems to be to name a hair-raising initial price (look! Foreigners! Made of money!) and walk away shrugging at any attempts to bargain — at least, that’s Hanoi. I’ve heard similar stories from people we’ve encounter; a shopkeeper trying to gouge Karin for a pair of Chinese stockings costing more than she’d pay for a decent pair in Paris, $480 for a $10 1970s vintage propaganda poster, stated without any smirking or irony whatsoever. Good luck with that, folks. What’s sad is, we’d really genuinely like to buy some stuff.
Thankfully, with our extra free time, we’ve been able to hit the Quan an Ngong for dinner again; the food was as delicious as last time, and the service fun and friendly (including a group of waiters snickering at our sad attempts to figure out what to do with the ingredients of a bowl of soup. Solution: dump it all in and get on with it.)
