Ha Long

Our sleeper bus arrived in Ha Long at 03:30 instead of 06:00 as expected. When arriving, there was already a pack of taxi drivers eagerly waiting to rip off the people arriving by bus by charging them horrendous prices to get them to their hotel. But with the Grab app it is very easy to get at least an understanding for how much a certain ride should approximately cost. And having spent some time in Vietnam already and, thanks to google maps, knowing exactly how long the ride to our hotel would take, we were prepared to not be fooled.
The first driver approaching us wanted 150k VID but as we tried to bargain to get at least below 100k, he immediately turned to another couple who was willing to pay the 150k. A second driver wanted 200k whereupon we just opened the Grab app to get a taxi there. He immediately reacted by saying that there is no Grab service in the area. Miraculously, it did not take long for us to get a Grab taxi and as soon as he saw that we had one, he offered to drive us for 100k. Note that once you start searching for a Grab, you get a pretty accurate estimate of how much it’s going to cost so we declined and waited for our Grab, which ended up costing us 37k. Unfortunately, this is not the only time in Vietnam where we felt like tourists are just viewed as cash cows ready to be milked.
When we arrived at our hotel “Thái Hà Boutique”, the place seemed dead but after some knocking on the door, luckily someone got up from a couch in the lobby and opened the door for us. To our surprise and gratefulness, it was no problem to just pay for an additional night, check-in and go to our room immediately, which we happily did.
The next day we slept in and then went for a walk on the beach including some food. Ha Long almost felt like a ghost town as there are many business and entire quarters that are abandoned. So walking through the streets was a bit strange at times. There were restaurants and bars, which were open for business, surrounded by abandoned houses with barely any customers or anyone walking by. Still, there were employees waiting for customers to come in all day.
While walking on the beach there were several groups of teenagers in multiple locations who wanted to take pictures with us as if they had never seen a European person before. They were either messing with us or it was some kind of challenge. But we thought it was funny so we just played along.
We ended the day with some delicious Indian food and went back to the hotel to rest before starting our next tour the morning after.

The only restaurant, but a pretty good one, that we have visited:
- Vanakkam Indian Family Restaurant - Taste of India (tasty food and huge portions)Læs mere