Lake Ba Be, Hanoi and Headed South

My last stop before Hanoi was Ba Be lake, a national park with three interconnected lakes. I did a homestay in a village on the lake and stayed for two nights at a place called Duy Tho. It was beautiful and affordable. I rented a boat for a day, which was expensive and loud, but I got to see the lake. It is well worth stopping by the lake for the homestay, but I would skip the boat trip unless you are with a group and have not spent much time on the water. I would have been happy with spending an hour in a small part of the lake in a dugout canoe.

Ba Be is quite beautiful. It was stunning on the water in the early morning. There are all sorts of exciting animals living around the lake, but they’re shy. The boat ride includes a stop by a small waterfall that feeds a hydroelectric plant and a short trek through a big cave. We stopped for lunch near the waterfall.

My host helped me find a faster and less trafficked road to get back to Hanoi, saving countless encounters with trucks and buses and saving me a couple of hours of driving. I was back in Hanoi in the early afternoon. Then it was time to get my bike serviced. It had some issues with shifting in 1st, 2nd and neutral

One of the great things about Hanoi is Bia Hoi. It’s a freshly brewed keg beer with a shelf life of a day. In the Old Quarter, you can pick up a glass for 5000 Dong (25 cents). It’s tasty, cold, and refreshing. On my last night in Hanoi, I went for Indian food at Tamarind. It was pricey but perfect. I was pleasantly surprised. I found a great place for a massage about 5km from the Old Quarter and walked over. For 450,000 dong ($22.50), I got a 90-minute massage preceded by a soak in a barrel, a soak in a jacuzzi, and a steam. Pure bliss.

I ended up in this tiny nowhere town my first night heading south, as my scheduled stop did not feel very friendly. The place I ened up in was very friendly!

I checked in to the only place to stay in town, which had two rooms. the next morning I went for a walk. As I passed by an elementary school, a couple of kids said, “Hello!” and I responded. Within 2 minutes, the entire school emptied out, and I was mobbed by kids saying hello, asking me my name, how old I was, where I was from, and on and on. They wanted to shake hands and were fascinated by my tattoos. I tried to get them out of the road and used taking a picture as a motivator. As you can see from the picture, they never really stopped vibrating.

I walked them all back to the school, some of the teachers were giving me the stink eye, and some were caught up in the kid’s excitement. When we returned to the school grounds, some of the kids were dragged off by teachers, but about 20 of them decided they would show me around town. We went to an outdoor market and the local hospital. I think they were introducing me to their parents, but who knows? One little girl gave me a flower, and that started a trend. After an hour or so of being dragged hither and yon, I escaped.

When I returned to the guest house, the second room had been rented to 4 engineers, and they invited me to eat dinner with them. Of course, out came the local hooch and a bunch of food I did not recognize, but they schooled me and approved of my use of chopsticks. When the bill came, they would not take my money. Of course, the woman who owned the restaurant tried to get me to pay for the whole bill. Unfortunately, if you are a westerner traveling here, you are a dollar sign to some people in SEA. Luckily that unpleasantness is offset by people like the four lovely gentlemen that bought me dinner.

Diving, Camping and Antibiotics

I was happy to arrive in Coron Town but not so excited about the 30 hours of travel it took to get here. The day after I arrived, I started my Advanced Open Water diving class, which is 5 dives in two days, which turned out to be a bit much for my body. The diving was great, and they included some basics as I had not been diving in 15 years. The first day was elementary. We worked on buoyancy and navigation skills. The second day was intense. I did three wreck dives, which encompassed the skills needed to pass the course, deep diving, wreck diving, and an enriched air dive. I was worn out at the end of the day. Unfortunately, that night I started to get a cough, a sore throat, and my ears hurt.

All three of the dives included penetrations, which in theory, you are not supposed to do until you take the entire wreck diving course. But here in Coron, anyone with an open water cert can go on a wreck dive and do penetrations, hmm, come to think of it, no one asked to see my PADI card. Penetrating a wreck means going inside it, which can be pretty dangerous. It was an amazing experience, but I will be taking some time off from diving. I have an inner ear infection and what feels like the flu.

Coron is not as sleepy as I thought it would be, they lengthened the runway at the airport a few years ago, and now 80-seat planes can land here, which has created rapid expansion and all the bad things that go with it. There are power blackouts every day, which the locals call “brownouts.” The night I arrived, candles lighted half the town. Food and accommodations are expensive here, compared to other parts of the Philippines and the Philippines is more expensive than anywhere else I have been in SEA. I also went on an “exhibition” which is island hopping, camping, and snorkeling. It was a bunch of guys teaching English in Korea and me.

The trip was fun, but based on the description of the trip I was expecting something more remote, I don’t think it was worth the money I paid for it.

I ended up being sick for eight days in Coron. Overall, it’s not my favorite country and I love the people, Goodbye Philippines.