For the final three days of the trip, I consented to joining a tour group. At the time it just seemed the most expedient way to get onto one of the many boats that troll Vietnam's famous Halong Bay - one of the seven natural wonders of the world, at least according to my tour guide, who has almost no reason to lie to me.
It was also a handy point in the trip to pay someone to cart me around for a while, rather than making all of my decisions myself. I think part of this is plain old foreign language fatigue.
It's Laos's fault. I'm so intent on learning more Lao that I'm getting lazy about acquiring Vietnamese. It would have been easier, though: typical that, of all the languages on this trip that employ the Western alphabet, I have to fall in love with this one:
That thing the the right of the yellow flower? That's a word.
I felt secure in my tour decision the moment our minibus passed out of Hanoi city limits and I tried to imagine myself alone on a public bus for a four-hour ride, arriving at the harbor in the midday heat and "seen chow" and "seen loy"-ing my way onto somebody's boat.
It would have been crazy white chick who walked in from the airport all over again. At least this time I have local currency. At 20,000 dong to the dollar, my favorite game of late is to take the equivalent of five bucks and "make it rain" all over my bed.
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