Note: This is the third part of a complete three part article that completes our time in Vietnam. This entry continues our adventures in Halong Bay and the wonder that is Tet in Hanoi.

The next day we were taken to a large island and dropped off. There we were given a bike each. These were frankly terrible bikes and I got the distinct impression that that staff did not expect us to ride them. They expected us to pay for a moped instead. An older couple from our group did so, but Cesca and I insisted on riding and so set off. The chain fell off immediately, so Cesca changed her bike and we set off. The wheels locked immediately, so Cesca changed her bike again and we set off. The seat fell off immediately, so Cesca took my bike, I got another one, and we set off.

The trip was through the mountains and I rode up to the guide,“What’s with these bikes?”

“They are the best we have.”

“Well, perhaps a little maintenance is in order.”

“Listen,” he said, “These people don’t have much.”

I thought this was a bit rich since it was his company’s responsibility to provision local services. Since he had so much of our money (about $2000 paid by the entire boat), one would think one of the locals could be trained as a bike mechanic. I suppose he was trying to make me feel guilty, but unfortunately for him I had already been to Laos. Those people had nothing. These people were relatively rich.

We rode through the mountain pass and down into the next valley. This was your absolute picture perfect Vietnamese countryside. Rice paddies, buffalo and villages set against the majestic mountains. Eagles soared overhead. The problems with the bikes were quickly forgotten.

We rode through the village and smiled a hello to all we met. This was much more like it. After about 5 miles or so, we stopped at a little cafe and bought some drinks, and then the guide led us to the walk.

It was clear to me that most of the time people do not actually fancy the walk, as it was straight up the mountain on a dirt track.

However, this time he had not only Cesca and I, but also a guy from the Italian mountains. He walked up the thing, back down, met us half way and back up again all without breaking breath. By the time we reached the peak (about an hour later), the three of us (plus guide) were the only ones who had bothered to make it.

At the top was an old base left over from the war, which afforded incredible views of the valley on either side and the water all around with the peaks of islands in the distance. It was one hell of a view.

We walked down again and stopped for refreshment. There I met another English couple who were about to go home. They too had got to wondering what their trip was all about and bemoaning the fact that they felt exactly the same as before they left. Don’t worry, I told them, it will come to you at home. Epiphanies are not always of the order of magnitude you expect. Not everyone can have the flashing burst of the infinite that struck Jesus or Buddha, some get lots of little ones, some get none. Perhaps they are something you must not look for.

Perhaps they are why we climb mountains and travel countries.

Personally, I get a little one every single time I cuddle up to Cesca in bed. That is good enough for me. Anyway, I had a big one about 12 years ago in Israel. Still, we jumped back on the bikes and rode out the way we came in.

Back on the boat, we were taken for one last jaunt, to Monkey Island. As we arrived, our group, which was by now getting on well, passed around some whisky and I read the Lonely Planet description about Monkey Island. I read it again aloud and everyone voted to give it a miss. Monkey Island is unsurprisingly full of monkeys that, also unsurprisingly, have developed a hatred for humans, not that I can say that I blame them. Subsequently they often attack them, and some have rabies.

Instead, the boat took us to a local floating village comprised of a couple of shacks, some barrels and a lot of nets. There we met with a clam farmer who uses an amazingly clever way of farming clams using buckets of mud suspended under water.

This was the most genuine experience of the entire venture and the one that we all enjoyed. The farmer was friendly and we joined him for a toast of the local firewater outside his shack.

The inside the shack sat his children and they obviously all live in this strange place. I think, it is quite possible the strangest lifestyle I have ever come across. At once so remote and harsh, and yet he gets tourists popping in all the time.

After half an hour of nodding and smiling, but no actual conversation, we got back on the boat and made for the final island.

Cat Ba Island is much larger than the rest and has a lot of building going on it. I suppose the idea is to turn it into a holiday resort, but now it is a bit of a concrete jungle amid a building site. We jumped into transports and were whisked to a hotel. This was purporting to be the Vietnamese idea of a high quality hotel, but I spied that it was really another type of tourist trap. That night we all met up for a set meal and some very expensive drinks. The food was ok, nothing special, but I really enjoyed the company as by this time we were all getting on in that peculiar British way of connecting when stuck with each other.

We slept comfortably that night. The next day, after a breakfast, we headed back towards the city. About half way, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. This also had something strange about it, as although it was nice and the food ok, I could not escape the feeling that only tourist busses come here. For people like Cesca and I, used to the genuine experience, such sugar coated tourism felt wrong and unnatural, but still the view from the window was great.

We bid the others goodbye when we arrived back in Hanoi and re-entered our original hotel. The staff was not pleased to see us at all. In fact, they told us that we could not stay. After I pointed out that we had already paid to stay, they got a little agitated. Eventually, they went over the road and organised for us to move hotels.

This turned out to be a great idea as the staff at this second hotel, the service, the room and the food, was the best I had in the whole of South East Asia. Friendly, quick, polite and happy these people made us feel right at home.

In the room, Cesca was still steaming about the other hotel. I personally think that the staff had made plans to close the place during the coming New Year, and we were totally buggering them up. Still, rudeness, the most unforgivable trait in a hotel concierge, was painful.

That night was the first day of Tet and effectively the Vietnamese New Year. Our hotel manager explained what that meant. Tet is the celebration of many things all rolled into one. The traditional Tet is the New Year, which means, like in the UK, that the year ticks over by one. However, unlike in the western world, it is also everyone’s official birthday. Therefore, someone 29 today would be 30 tomorrow. Someone born today would be one tomorrow. Crazy as that sounds, it gives rise to the third phenomenon: Tet is also Xmas. Of course, the Vietnamese are not a Christian nation, rather they are Buddhist, but Tet affords all the practical actions over a British Christmas.

Firstly, everyone takes as much of the week off as they can, they also go to visit their families for that time. They have a special social practice around this, where on the first day of Tet, only the direct family are invited, then on the second day wider family, the third day, neighbours, and so on. It is very easy for foreigner to cause offense in such an environment and if you are invited on a certain day, you must never appear beforehand. You are seriously warned about this.

Secondly, everyone buys each other presents.

Thirdly, they all surround themselves with a special tree. Rather than the Norwegian fir tree used in the west, they use a peach or orange tree. The entire city was decked out in beautiful fruit trees all around. It was rather magical.

Looking at it from his viewpoint it is not hard to comment that Vietnamese Tet has everything in common with the average UK Christmas; religion enters into it in only small and controlled amounts, while superstition is rife.

Also worth remembering is that Tet is the anniversary of the Tet offensive against the Yanks. The Vietnamese feel very strongly that the thousands slaughtered in the ensuing battles died as heroes, every single one. Amazing and even now the strength of feeling still moves me.

The final thing that happens is that the City empties in the run up to Tet and then everyone comes out for the fireworks party. Cesca and I spent the day exploring the area set aside for the party and planning our night’s activities. We had a lot of fun playing in the strangely silent roads, possibly for the only time in the year that they are empty. For a country such as Vietnam, where everyone – absolutely everyone – has a moped, this was a surreal experience.

As the night came down, the city stirred and we went in search of food. On the way we bumped into a few people we knew and shared a hearty “Chuc mung nam moi!” which is the cry of Tet. We eventually found a very special place to hold up awaiting the action coming later, this was a great bar above a street and one of the few place still open. Most were either eating in roadside food cafe’s, a sort of selection of crates used as chairs and planks of wood as tables – fear not as the food is amazing at these places, or they were ensconced in the higher end bars that charged Western high prices.

We managed to find something in between and had a very romantic time.

As the hour approached, we made our way down to the lake, which by now was stacked with people. Our worry about being unwelcome at such event vanished as the Vietnamese seemed to adopt all the foreigners that night, everyone was happy and smiling, all had brought their families out to enjoy the event, it was a wonderful feeling to be so welcomed at such an event and lots of smiling shouts of, “Chuck Mung Nam Moi!” reached our ears from all directions.

The crowd closed in and the numbers welled to thousands. Now everyone was standing. Cesca and I could see over the sea of heads that they were awaiting something. We worried for a moment that the trees lining the lakes edge would block the view of the festivities, but then the fireworks started and banished those fears.

I have seen fireworks all over the world, In Disneyland Florida, in the seaside coastal town of Brixham, in Australia, in Cambodia, in Brazil and even in Israel, but the fireworks I saw that night were as good if not better than any of them. The Vietnamese welcomed in the New Year, their new ages and honoured their dead with one hell of a bang.

After almost an hour, the last explosion lit up the sky and the crowd started to move in one direction. It seemed that some sort of temple ceremony was now happening and the idea was to visit the temples in a certain order. Cesca and I joined in and were carried along amongst the happy fellows.

Many hours later, we managed to arrive back to the hotel. There we found that the manager was having her family event right there in the lobby. With great joy she bid us to join, and greatly honoured, we did. I hope it brought her luck. We ate the traditional cakes and drank a little before thanking her and heading to a well-deserved bed.

A day later, we were leaving Hanoi and Vietnam in general and I took stock of what he had experienced. The people of Vietnam are a pragmatic and hard working bunch. Their economy is trying to copy the successes of the western while avoiding the problems, at least for now. Their cities are rich and impressive and they have a very positive attitude. They love visitors, but do not love tourists and in that I agree wholeheartedly with them. They cater to tourism out of the fundamental need to enrich themselves. Their cooking is divine, their beer is fine and their women are very good looking. We had seen the most sugar coated sights and yet had also managed to peek a little into the truth under these illusions. There was so much more to explore here that I felt that we could be back one day and see the rest.

I loved Vietnam. The country that, more than any other, I got “wrong” in my preconceptions. It has to be seen and felt with the heart itself as, like the brochures for Halong Bay, pictures alone cannot do it justice.

Regards,

Basho

Coming next: Coming in the next article is the mighty city of Bangkok, an incredible meet-up with some old friends and the horror of the Bridge On River Kwai, where Basho comes face to fangs with an eight inch spider.

The trip cost us $85, and we were lucky, others on our boat later told us what they had paid anything from $80 to $160 each for exactly the same experience.

The bus arrived at the dock’s edge (having visited the ubiquitous tourist-shucking-shop on the way) and we joined the scrum waiting for their boats. It was there that I started to come up with a theory:

What appears to happen, to my sceptical mind, is that the tour guide from the hotel is actually an agent from one of these travel cafes. He arrives with busload of suckers, all who have been sold “luxury” cruises and generally up-sold as much as possible, and then goes into the dock office and passes you off into that system for a commission.

Then he buggers off.

Now you are in another system, which has bought you all at the same price. This is why paying more makes no difference to the client. To the agent, paying more goes straight into his pocket. So now, you are randomly’ishly assigned a boat by block and shuffled aboard. The boat crew have paid the office a small amount for membership of the boat club and they then earn all their money, beyond a cut of the price, in the reselling of extras. This explains why a beer is £4 and they hate you bringing your own water.

However, that is just a theory and frankly like most we simply went along with it like sheep. After ten minutes our boat was ready. It didn’t look too bad; a little fake in that extra effort had been made to make it look oriental, with wood panels and dragonheads, etc. Really, it was just a big square-bottomed cruiser.

We said hello to our fellow passengers and settled into our room. This was in the second deck above the main kitchen, which itself was above the engine. The quality of the room was not too bad for two days at sea and I am sure that in the summer a lot of fun is to be had in sunbathing on the decks. This was not summer, but then we are British and are more than used to that. Cesca showed concern about the noise, but I figured that we would be stopped during the night.

Of course, the boat and the rooms had only passing resemblance to the pictures in the brochures.

The boat made its way out of the bay, jostling with the absolute armada of other semi-identical boats all setting off at the same time. We piled onto the top deck and considered the scrum; a veritable traffic jam of boats hitting each other and men shouting while wielding barge poles.

All the boats had people on the top deck (effectively the roof) by now and everyone was a little sheepishly staring at each other’s transport to see who’s was the best. I think that ours was average.

I was filming this amazing sight on my camcorder when it suddenly went pop and broke. Yep, I went off-line with my filming from this moment. This was the start of a big hassle and I did not get a working video camera up and running until half way through India, two months away!

Anyway, we chugged across to the famous limestone karsts peaks of Halong. They were large, strange, and popping out of the water to great heights. Over all there are more than 775 dotted around only 334km.

These amazing ancient structures have featured in many novels and films and it is not hard to see why, as they are unique. At least that is what they tell you on the trip. They remind me of fjords that have half collapsed into the sea. We passed by umpteen small structures as the sea mist swirled around them. The consensus on board was that they were well worth seeing

What I personally enjoyed more, strange old me, was the communities that live on the water, literally on the water, at the bases of the islands. Floating little villages and boats ferrying locals to a fro were very interesting. What would living in such a place be like? I wondered to myself. How would you get to work or to school?

The boat made its way further amongst the islands, roughly in a line with all the others. Then we came to the first stop; the Sung Sot Caves, or in English, “The Caves of Surprises!” I have been in caves all over the world, from Asia, to America to Australasia and of course, in the UK, but here was a cave system of magnificent proportions.

The Vietnamese know this and have designed a walk through the cave system that would be in Disney World if it were not so real. Well lit and stunning in proportion we went down to the caves in groups. The group leader tried valiantly to tell us about what we were seeing, albeit an official version, but I could not understand a word of what he was talking about so I started listening to the next group. Then I noticed my American chums from Sothern Vietnam.

After exchanging hellos and a quick update on our journey through the county, Cesca and I joined in with them and we all walked around together. The girl, and I honestly cannot remember her name – sorry, was about to finish her 6 month trip and head back home.

This was the first time that I had come across a now very familiar syndrome. When people start travelling they expect something to happen. They expect to change, get religion, or become one with nature. To find themselves changed inside, with the flashing of epiphany and momentous re-understandings of spacetime. It is not their fault; this is how travelling is sold to people; its image. Watching films like, The Beach or The Motorcycle Diaries, suggests that you can lose yourself and find yourself on your travels. Perhaps even become a famous revolutionary leader!

The truth is not so seductive.

This is 2009 and it is quite possible, even on a budget, to travel for months and never be out of your comfort zone, to never be reached inside, even by yourself. This is partially due to what is called, “The backpackers bubble”. It is really hard to honestly break out of this bubble. This leads to a quite strong feeling of frustration with having missed something. People tend to become uncharacteristically philosophical at these times, they tend to want to talk about, “what they have learned and what it all means.”

She talked and I listened.

Since then, I have come across this mind-set many times and I have talked many people through it, lent an ear and spoken a little on the subject. In fact, I have been thinking about it deeply and I am going to write a lot more than is appropriate here. Suffice to say, this girl was ever so slightly disappointed with her trip and needed to talk about it.

I am glad that she chose me for that brief moment for I was able to tell her this: “When you get home, when you find your old life envelope you like a warm bath, you will feel a tinge of guilt. Guilt that you did not become Che Guevara or a Zen Buddhist Master. You may also feel shame. Shame that there is not a book going to be written about your experiences. You want your life to have a meaning; you are told that it is special. Of course, life itself is special, but the meaning of an individual’s life is not found at the end of journeys. Meaning is found by living and breathing. Life is not a pilgrimage with a reward at the end. Life is a dance, and one that you only get to dance once. Cherish what you have done, not what you missed. Don’t look back, don’t look forwards. Concentrate on now. Live in the now and let the past rest and future be. Then your life will not lack for meaning.

Anyway, out of the caves, we returned to the boat and it took us to a floating village. This village had some very dodgy canoes, which we all jumped in and rowed ourselves around and through a cave system. This was pretty cool, but let down by the very poor equipment and the short time given to this part of the journey. I got the sense of boxes being ticked by the tour guides.

Then we were dropped off at an island to walk to the top of a karst mountain. It was great fun, if a little steep. At the top, we watched the nightfall and the lights come on all around.

That night we came down for dinner and sat with a nice English couple we had been chatting to and getting on well with.

Then the staff came up and directed us to move to sit with a different group.

“Why?” I asked

“You have different meal.”

“But we don’t mind, neither do our friends here,” cue agreement from our new comrades, “we want to sit here.”

“Move that table now,” he said pointing to the table next to us.

“Does it really matter?”

“Now!”

This conversation was then repeated with the next table and so on until the entire boat was being rearranged because no-one was seated “where they should be”  Everyone had to get up, move a few feet and back sit down. People were all a little miffed to say the least and some loud protests fell on deaf ears.

After all that, the only difference in the meal was the starter: crab.

The Vietnamese insistence in this regard, and their total bemusement regarding our reticence, was the first time I had come across a peculiar Asian phenomenon. It does not happen very often, but mores and social norms are naturally different over here. Not that they are in any way wrong, just different and when Western and Eastern feelings clash it often results in a complete lack of understanding. Our hosts simply stood bemused at everyone’s problem with moving, shocked (probably) at the (apparent) rudeness. For the Westerners, on the other hand, who had all been brought up that the “customer is always right”, rules in restaurants are really only guidelines; often broken as a way of making one feel special. To us the staff were being amazingly fussy and rude.

Who hasn’t been asked to follow a rule by a server of some type and then had them make an exception, “just for you sir”? We all have, it is common in the west. A Western server would not have insisted on a shuffle, they would have simply served where we were. It really was not important that we got the “right” meal, but it was important that we sat with who we wanted to.

None of this exists in Asia and I had similar things happen in countries all over this continent. Especially Japan, where the normally super-polite Japanese can turn into being, what can only be described as, “bloody insistent.” I suspect the core of it is the language barrier, as English has all sorts of nuances and “ways of putting things” when speaking to soften an order into a request. To those coming to English from another language, having been taught direct speaking, they can appear rude as all hell. Once we had all had about six beers in us, the staff started the hard-sell on things like pearls. They did not get very far, but Cesca did buy some postcards.

I suspect that the staff on these boats hate the rich westerners with their drinking, loud aggressiveness (to us: assertiveness) and incredible rudeness (what the westerners call ‘being direct’ or ‘plain spoken’). On the other hand, westerners probably just want an authentic experience without being asked to dip into their pockets every five seconds or the feeling that they are being fleeced. I think that trips like these made Cesca and I want to drop off the tourist routes as much as possible. To break out of that bubble and into a little freedom and honesty, where “tourists” were only normal “customers” and “servers” became “locals”. Such wants started to pull at us and our future plans for India started to take shape.

Anyway, after enough drinking, Cesca and I left the others to it and turned in. The boat was anchored in a peaceful lagoon along with many others and it slowly drifted around the anchor. Cesca and I opened the windows to watch the lights of the other boats playing against the deep darkness. The sky was clear and in the distance loomed the shapes of the giant karsts.

It was quite beautiful.

The next part is coming soon…

Regards,

Basho

Note: This is the first part of a final three part article that completes our time in Vietnam. The next part will be auto posted in 4 days and the third part 4 days after that.

This was the last stop on our tour of Vietnam and almost the last stop in the whole of South East Asia. It had been a long winding road up this thin and sunny country. A long winding road inside us too; as the further we travelled around SEA the more we felt changed by our time here. We wanted it to be an ending to remember. Luckily, the Vietnamese were only too willing to provide one hell of a party to see us off.

This was because in a few days it was Tet. To the Vietnamese this is Xmas, New Year’s Eve and everyone’s birthday all on the same day.

We arrived in Hanoi by, the now commonality, of a “Crush Bus” and were dumped unceremoniously on the outskirts of the city by the corner of a set of turnpikes. Traffic ran seemingly in all directions around us as we negotiated our bags off the bus.

Sitting on the sidewalk for a few moments, we almost fell prey to the taxi drivers who descended on the arriving tourists like fisherman who have just spotted a large shoal of fish. Cesca and I watched as the newer tourists were netted, gutted for cash, placed in small packed tins and driven off into the city. Clearly the bus company had dropped us here as a way of supporting outrageous taxi fees, probably for some sort of kick back. I looked around; the Hotel was probably only 30 meters away as the crow flies, but from here, well most would pay anything to get away from all this traffic. Cesca waved away all prowling taxi drivers and we sat on our bags and waited. After a while, we were the only tourists left and indeed the bus moved on as well. Only a few unlucky taxi drivers remained.

Good. We were ready.

We approached one and offered a price, a fair price.

He demanded a ridiculous price.

We all laughed and the game begun.

I remember thinking that seen from a distance through the eyes of, say, an observer from another planet, what was happening here would look like some sort of strange and ancient ritual dance. The Taxi driver and we moved around each other twisting and swaying, we were all pointing at maps and towards distant objects. We were haggling with big arm gestures and subtle head nods or shakes. At moments, we would turn away with a wave of a hand dismissively, and then strangely come back almost as if we had forgotten something whereupon it would all begin anew. The taxi driver would throw up his arms and cry out deploringly, and then hold his hands apart in an unmistakable gesture of reasonableness. There was lots of counting on fingers.

The observer from another planet might say to himself that, “Surely all this cannot just be for a taxi ride?” and when his fellows asked him later, he would probably theorise that we were conjuring up some sort of God.

Eventually all the moves were made and the strange waltz ended with my saying, “Look mate, do you see anyone else here except us? Don’t you want to get paid?”

The taxi driver sighed and considered the truth in this fact. “Ok,” he said. He conspired to look wounded.

It was at that point that I realised that we had in fact lost this exchange; as although a $30 taxi had cost us $10, it was actually only worth $5. No matter, he had been a worthy opponent and I respected that.

The bus company we used to move around Vietnam is called Sinh Cafe. As mentioned in previous posts all Vietnamese cafes are in fact tourist offices. The Sinh Cafe office was the location we now departed in the taxi. However, I was surprised to spy another office with the Sinh Cafe logo on the drive in, “Look baby,” I said pointing out the window, “another Sinh Cafe, it’s probably a little closer for when we leave.”

“And there,” she said point in a different direction.

“Oh and another there,” I said. “Hang on…”

“They’re all over the place!”

Indeed, on the journey into the heart of the city, we came across no less than 18 Sinh Cafe’s, all with the correct logo, all with the correct adverts, but all fake.

Some were laughably so; containing nothing more than a single bedraggled looking person sitting on what looked to me like an upside-down bucket. Others had taken the deception so seriously that they looked more professional than the real thing; investing in moulded plastic counter tops and sporting large hi resolution posters. We counted them off as the Taxi pulled into the narrow streets that make up the old quarter. The traffic, mostly an endless train of mopeds, was everywhere. A few more turns and the streets narrowed again. Now the shops took on a strange and more “touristic” look. I started to see western style bars, street food vendors, and endless travel agents amongst which were dotted infinite fake Sinh Cafes. We were in the tourist quarter now; a place as much removed from the city’s true life as it was possible to get.

The Taxi dropped us off, spat out our bags and was instantly gone into the throng of bikes. We walked down a narrow alley to our hotel. There is no shortage of hotels in Hanoi, of course, but trying to find one with good reviews, had space and was open over this period was difficult. The staff was unusually brusque considering I had cash in my hand, and I came to the initial conclusion that we had annoyed their sensibilities merely by being born. At the time, this manner seemed strange, but now I can see that this was a New-year for them and they would rather be with their families.

In fact, this attitude was to be found almost everywhere on that day. They say not to travel at Tet, and yet we had no choice, I remember wondering how well this was going to work out.

We went out for a walk around the city and tried to get out of the tourist bubble. As these things go, there is lots to see here. There is the park area around the lake, which functions as a sort of meeting point and place of celebration,

…the street market with its fresh fish and a million smells,

…and the church area with high-end coffee shops and moneyed wealth. Then there is the amazing way that the city planners have laid out the shops; all are collected together according to type. So, one street has only spice shops full of strange things in jars that smell incredible,

…while another has fake money sellers who sell stacks of fake $ notes used in funerals.

One street we walked down was full of nothing but people noisily hammering out tin buckets.

Cesca and I really enjoyed our walk that day.  When we arrived back we looked into a 3 day trip to the legendary Halong Bay, and be back for Tet proper.

Something you have to come to terms with when picking a trip to Halong Bay is that you cannot make a correct choice. That is one that doesn’t, somehow, try very hard to rip you off. It is a kind of like a shell game, in that the entire edifices of the travel agents, brochures, glossy posters, special money-off deals and so-called impartial advice is setup to convince you that what you are sold is somehow relevant or bares any relation whatsoever to what waits for you when you get there.

It does not.

So, in order to assist readers considering the options, remember that there are really only three price brackets:

Under $50: For which you are probably kidnapped and buried alive at midnight. At least that is the impression that the woman in the hotel conspired to give us when we enquired about the “cheaper deal.” It is impossible to buy this deal or more likely it probably does not exists at all.

$80 – $140: If you do not look rich, then you are pushed firmly towards this bracket. While the price range here appears large, do not let that fool you into thinking that one boat is actually going to be better than another. Whatever your hotel or travel agent tells you, WHATEVER, the boats are effectively randomised. This is the range in which to bargain hard.

$140+: You can pay up to $1000 without trying in this bracket. The boats promise to be truly splendid for this much, but remember that they are all going to the same places and taking the same trips off the boat. However, I am sure that if you pay enough, you will get an amazing experience.

Cesca and I were offered two options in the second bracket and she pointed to the one she liked. The women pointed to the other.

“What about this one?” the very short, female hotel manager asked.

“No that one please,” said Cesca smiling and pointing again at the brochure on the left.

“Ok then,” she replied with a nod to the one on the right, “I book you this one.”

“No, I said that one,” Cesca said pointing, “I like the look of this boat more than that one.”

The women picked up the brochure and considered the picture of the boat carefully. “You go better on other one.”

“Why?”

“Boat better.”

Cesca was getting annoyed but her voice remained very calm (only I – as her husband – could pick up the anger), “I… want… that… one.”

The women looked at Cesca as though questioning the innocence of someone choosing a tour based on the picture on the brochure, which clearly, she knew, was nothing to do with anything. Cesca was looking very determined and I could see the lady weighing up her options. She broke first, and waved a hand smiling, “Ok ok ok. This one.”

“Thank you.”

Of course, the next day, we got on the bus and found that we were on the other boat tour…

The next part is coming in four days…

Regards,

Basho