Traveling day twenty-one - from luxury to ...... Well not luxury but still ok

We awoke to a pre typhoon grey morning on Halong Bay, and another seven course meal on the boat. The junk took us to a local floating fish farm where we we able to throw small fish to bigger fish and watch them thrash around to eat it. My pants smelt like fishy water for the rest of the day.

The wind started to pick up and white caps started appearing on the waves as we made the two hour journey back to the harbor. A typhoon was coming, and all the tours for the next two days were cancelled. The junks were all heading back out to the islands to shelter among the mountains.

Our boat was much more luxurious than I expected, and it was amazing to be part of it. We were offered cool little towels and food all the time in wonderful surroundings. It was only later that night that we found out the junk we were on were only mid-range pricing. It is hard for us to imagine what the super-luxury ones would have extra...

We then had a long wait for our 11pm train - a sleeper train to Hue. We hit the shops in Hanoi again and stretched out our dinner as long as we could. But by the time we got on the train the girls were super over tired and emotional and needed a bit of TLC. The train was not luxury. The best word for it is 'functional'.

11 hours of train trip later....

Cultural tips

Chris' Cultural Tip - Girls Are Precious
Our guide today remarked that having two girls is "precious". I couldn't agree more but asked why he said so. Apparently in Vietnam there are more boys than girls (52% to 48%). This is a hangover from Confucianism where boys are supposed to be of more worth than girls. However the result is that girls are more rare, but can then also have more of a pick of the boys when it comes to marriage - especially the pretty ones. In fact with dowries it can be hard for a man to get married without enough money. Our guide, who was not that young, is not married and thinks he needs to save up for another 5 years before he can afford to get married.

So in Vietnam girls really are precious.




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