Not to be confused with the dozens of other companies with names encompassing a similar how-is-this-not-trademark-infringement variation (e.g. Indo-China Junk, Indochina Junk Cruises, Indochina Junk 2) -- A common trick used endlessly around the region -- The official company with which we booked lived up to every expectation. And while many would think having the term "junk" in one's official name would indicate a status of lesser quality, in actuality, it refers to the type of vessel on which the cruise takes place (nose pointed upwards, glasses tilted downwards, slight cough accentuated). Why junk though, you may ask? Hell if I know, nothing really translates very well over on this side of the world...
Joining us on our junk-but-not-that-type-of-junk cruise for the next 3 days would be the following, unique, makeup (actual names hidden for sarcastic slander-based purposes):
- Mr and Mrs Hoity McToitster - A retired Australian couple who happened to be on the slightly wealthier end of the spectrum. And by slightly, I mean extremely and overly-willing to share every detail in its regard. More on them to come shortly.
- Ozzy Fam - A mixture of two Australian families traveling together, encompassing over 1/2 the cruises "landloving" population with a total of 11 passengers (7 of which were children - thankfully of the well-behaved sort). Luckily for us, the parents were quite entertaining in their pursuit to drain the bar of all available beer/liquor (we estimated a 3-day/2-night tab around $1,000 -- Ours in comparison was $50)
- The Twins - A family of four from the UK, whose two identical twin teen sons may have smiled almost as often as they spoke (aka never). And that's about that on this overly-exciting group.
While our initial hopes of having multiple younger couples with which to become "buddy buddy" during our cruise were all but lost, we instead were treated to a nice preview of our lives to come, as sharing a small boat with 9 children of various ages is a perfect way to prepare for the inevitable outcome of a path along post-marriage maturity.
Onto the highlights:
- Mealtime (The Company) - With the Ozzy Fam taking up the larger center table, and The Twins at one of the two 4-person seating's, that left Julie and I conveniently paired up with Mr and Mrs Hoity McToitster for each and every one of our 7 meals onboard. While an extremely friendly and pleasant couple, it did not take long for stories of glitz and glamour to be shared our way. My two favorites/most-memorable were as follows:
- The ever-difficult decision of whether to drive to the Lakehouse upon arrival in Australia (which unfortunately has no wifi due to its horribly remote location on an immense plot of land), or just spend the evening at the condo, as it is a much shorter ride from the airport. Your typical 3rd world dilemma.
- Discussing the potential value of their home after learning of their neighbor's recent appraisal. As I cringed when an actual figure of $1.5M was stated (please don't say a number, please don't say a number, dammit she just said a ridiculous number), it was helped further to be explained how much nicer, AND updated, the Toitsters home is in comparison. Phew, I was worried there for a second.
- Mealtime (The Food) - The one beneficial aspect of listening to the details of another's overly-successful lifestyle, with only having to respond "oh, really?" as to promote a continuation of their stories, is that it gives plenty of time for one to devour whatever food may be sitting in front of their hungry pallet. And to be honest, there was no shortage of unbelievably delicious food served our way. With our smallest meal consisting of "only 11 courses, for which we apologize," each and every sitting was a culinary variety of everything mouth-watering Vietnam has to offer.
- "Beautiful" - Despite being extremely proficient in the English language, our Vietnamese "tour guide" had a slight disposition towards the over-utilization of the word beautiful. With a thesaurus full of potential synonyms, not one was used as a replacement for what would soon describe almost every single thing we did, ate, saw or dedicated our other numerous senses towards. "And now we eat our beautiful lunch on the beautiful boat in the beautiful Halong Bay." (And yes, this was a real sentence). Beautifully-said.
- Other Highlights - Beautiful kayak ride, beautiful cave dinner and our beautiful private beach for beautiful swim in beautiful water
Onto the pics:
| What better way to follow-up an evening Water Puppet Show in Hanoi then by seeing one only 12 hours later on our drive out to Halong Bay! Thankfully every act was exactly the same |
| Beautiful Junk resting in beautiful bay |
| Beautiful wife resting in beautiful room (yes, this will be a trend for the remaining photos I imagine) |
| View from the top deck... it was... beautiful, would you say? |
| A handful of the 1,600+ karst mountain islands |
| Finally mastered the delay photo option on our GoPro |
| Although every advertisement for Halong Bay cruises are full of images of sail-raised junks, in reality, most only raise them for about 3-4 photo-filled minutes |
| "Off-roading" into some caves |
| Julie's next Facebook profile picture I imagine |
| Yeah, we fancy and whatnot |
| I'm not sure if you refer to this as a "spring rolling lesson" or "spring roll rolling lesson" -- Either way, we officially are experts in the art |
| Arriving to our "private beach" |
| Please ignore the freakishness of my right arm |
| 1 of many Pina Coladas for Miss Moehlig |
| A little perspective for the size of the karsts |
| The infamous "cave dinner" known throughout the Trip Advisor world |
| 12 BBQ-filled courses of every meat imaginable |
| Posing in front of the "food fixture" table |
| And that would be a near-identical replica of our ship made out of a watermelon and carrots.. only took the chef 2 hours. Insane. |
| When your arms are just too lazy to row... |
No comments:
Post a Comment