I was lucky.
During the trip that we've done in our first weekend here, the guide was a very nice girl that speaks good English and we became friends, so I see her time to time, when she is not working.
( * we stayed in contact all these years and meanwhile she married a Romanian and she's living in Timisoara; life's full of surprises.)
(Remy's photo)The trip was excellent; I felt in love with the things we saw: mountains growing out of the water in strange shapes and so straight and imposing, fishermen villages floating on the water, children and dogs jumping from a floating house to another - amazing !
(Remy's photo)
It started weird though. We were still at the hotel at the time (before moving in the hotel apartment with the laughing-at-my-ass-guardian) and even if we were living just for a couple of days and left all our stuff in the hotel room, cause we intended to keep the room for at least another week, we had to pay for the time we already stayed and for the night that we were supposed to be away, before going; even if they had the credit card number and could charge it any-time, even if we had all our stuff in the room, even the whole bus was waiting for us and even if we told the receptionist that our computers only, still in the room, costs more than his “putain d’hotel” (meaning of course, like you guessed, his "f... hotel") !
Well, he was stubbornly smiling and writing by hand invoice after invoice, one for each night we stayed in, and one for the night we were going to be away, as we left our stuff inside therefore keeping the room, he explained…
With about half an hour late and an impatiently-hot-waiting-bus, we left.
Not even ten minutes later we arrived in a place where a lot of tourists were waiting and we had to get down. We were waiting now with all the others; we soon found out that we were supposed to change the bus and then go for real.
As soon as we did, the guide, a small Vietnamese guy with the worse accent ever, got up and said: “Nowa weee sayyy byeee-byeee Haaanooi and…”
After this, nobody was listening any more. We were all laughing behind the chairs - I guess because we all had the same image of a bus full of wondering-why-the-hell-we-took-this-trip grown-ups, heads on a side, innocent looks, waiving and saying all at once with girlish voices: “byeeee-byeeee Haaanoooi”…
The fun continued in the back of the bus where we were seated with two other French. And it was really funny till we stopped and the same funny guide invited us at lunch.
Just when we were about to get down, he pushed us back saying that just four of us are going to eat here and the rest in another place.
OK, we said, even if it was weird; we are four (together with the two other French we met) and we would like to eat together.
He pushed us even harder and started to scream that No, the other two French can’t eat with us! That He is the guide so He knows !!!
Nobody understood why and after a long hurry-scurry we finally got the idea: as the other two French were supposed to stay longer in “Ha Long Bay” - the name of the place where we were going - their schedule was different, they were following another trajectory therefore eating in a different place; and they were supposed to change the bus (again).
But the poor guide-guy (fortunately his mission finished at lunch time and the two groups had each another guide) was unable to explain this in his byeee-byeee-Haaaanoooi-English ; explaining often seems the most difficult thing to do, especially when all they see is thy pride being hurt by these ungrateful-always-wanting-to-understand-everything foreigners!
...Well, I'm harsh! So, no, it is not difficult... it is actually impossible!
Most of the foreigners here are trying to learn some words in Vietnamese, so we kind of do want to meet middle-way; but the difficulty of the pronunciation and the contorted faces of the Vietnamese listener when hearing our nonsense efforts, kind of makes you loose the enthusiasm…
You can read on their faces “if you speak in English I don't understand a thing, and if it is my own language, I don’t recognize any of it !”
... So it's our turn to be useless and incapable ...
(Remy's photo)Well, this last picture, it is not one my condescending jokes, it is actually nature's sculpture in one of the caves we've visited in Ha Long Bay; the lighting and the colours are not mine either, they are exactly like they are shown in the cave, for the eyes of those who could pass by without noticing it.
Thought deserve being displayed even if the photo is not mine either, it was taken by Remy, one of the French we met in the bus and that I accidentally met again on the way back to Paris; so during the flights and the eight hours waiting between planes in Singapore, we exchanged photos and we laughed our hearts out while telling each other our part of the Vietnamese experience.
So thanks Remy, wherever you are, hope you will not mind me using your photos after all these years. :)
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