Making Our Own Way

OK, so we had a pretty good adventure yesterday. Well.... not good, but it was interesting.
After staying in Hanoi, we wanted to go out to the famous Ha Long Bay. There was no shortage of hotels, restaurants, and random people offering us tour packages that ranged from as low as $60 per two day tour, to $160 for the same thing. We're pretty adventurous, right? So we decided to just figure it out as we go and not book a tour. We've done that so many times, we thought it would be easy. Not so easy this time. Had trouble showing the cab driver where the bus station was because he spoke no English and didn't know how to read a map.....Had a hard time figuring out where to pay for the bus and which bus to take because nobody spoke English. One guy new the name of the town and put us on this little mini bus with no one in it and some other town name written on the front. Hmm...a bit fishy. But the air conditioning was on so we decided to wait a bit. Others finally started getting on and we said Ha Long to enough people that we were now fairly sure it was the right bus. Of course no one spoke English except this fourteen year old boy who could say, "My name Soa, where you from, how old?"
Oh, it was just great when I tried to ask him, "How long does it take to get there?"
He says, "Yes Ha Long."
"No, HOW long?"
"Yes, Ha Long," he repeats as he points down at this bus.
It gets even better when I needed to use the restroom a few minutes later. You see, this "bus" was slowing down and veering off to the side of the road every time they saw some people standing there, and then they'd yell out the name of the next town we were going to. They really wanted to fill up ALL of the seats, including the overturned plastic box on the floor. I tried explaining to the lady collecting money that I needed a restroom break. Nobody understood a word I was saying.....I resorted to mime. They still didn't get it! They just looked at me funny. Luckily they stopped to pick up more passengers after not TOO long. I just jumped out, tapped her on the shoulder, pointed to the nearby bushes, and did another little mime. Chrisi said they all started laughing when they saw me jump behind the bush.
This was the full on locals way to go, as we were finding out. Then, when we were just about to the town, the bus pulls over and everybody is trying to tell us to get off by pointing and saying Ha Long. They also pointed somewhere and said taxi. It looked like we were on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, but there were a couple taxis there so we took one and drove to the dock.
Guess what? When we got there, we found out that the boat we wanted left about an hour earlier.
We had to get a room for the night, but it turned out ok in the end. We booked a six hour tour through our hotel and had a great trip today. The place was amazing. Here are a couple photos from today: