Halong Bay, Vietnam (June 2018)

Three weeks ago, my wife traveled to Hoi An, Halong Bay, and a brief stay in Hanoi. Today, I'll tell you about our wonderful trip to Halong Bay. Next time, I'll let you know about the very underrated city of Hoi An.

Before going to Halong Bay I heard a lot about it. Many students talked about it and one Kiwi friend mentioned how she had a blast when she and her husband went there last year. Because of hearing about it so much, I knew it would be nice but I didn't want the hype to cause me to have high expectations of this place.

While my wife and I were booking flights and hotels for Vietnam, I told my wife that we should wait until we are in Vietnam in order to book our tickets to Halong Bay. Why? I wanted to hear what the locals said about the place first and more importantly, every hotel and travel agency in Hanoi will try to offer you the best deal there. Sure enough. We tried our own hotel and they gave us some options but they seemed a bit expensive, so we tried two travel agencies. The first one gave us the same options and although the prices were slightly cheaper, we tried another one. We decided on staying to get a 1-night/2-day cruise and it was rated three stars. The deal we got was pretty amazing. We paid $115 which included all of our meals, a cabin, kayaking, hiking, swimming, fishing, and exploring a cave.

From our hotel, our guide, Thang (from Legacy Legend Cruises) picked us up at 8:00am at the Hanoi Space Hotel. He was a great guide because he was funny, patient, and very detailed into explaining what we were to do while we were on our cruise. He even had to wait for a group of five Chinese people that were still hiking while the rest of us were sitting on the boat wondering where they were. The rest of us went back to our cruise boat while Thang kept searching for them. What a tough job that a tour guide has!

After we arrived at our spot in Halong Bay, we went hiking. From there we took a long 4.5 hour ride in a van to the city of Halong. But the ride wasn't so bad. We had one rest stop where you can go to the bathroom, but some snacks, or buy some souvenirs. On top of that we saw some beautiful landscape along the way:

On the way to Halong Bay

Once we got there, we got out of our vans, and boarded our boat:

About ready to board our boat

Here's a look at our cabin. It wasn't huge but it was comfortable and since we were on a three-star cruise, we couldn't complain. We got toothpaste, shampoo, two cheap toothbrushes, and a bed that was comfortable enough:

Our cabin

And then we were on our way with some other vessels along the bay:

Just leaving the city of Halong

Next, we could start to see the limestone karsks and islets approaching in the distance:

Limestone ahead!

Limestone karsks and isles

And of course we had to take pictures while on the sundeck of the boat:

After a great lunch, we got into a smaller boat and headed to one of the islets to go hiking. Once we got there, we saw a statue of a Soviet astronaut, Gherman Titov, which was put on the islet in 2015. He apparently contributed to the reunification and liberation of Vietnam. You can learn more about him in this article.

Ti Top (Titov) Island

Once we finished a great lunch, we got into a smaller boat and headed to one of the islets to go hiking. Immediately after we got there, we saw a statue of a Soviet astronaut, Gherman Titov, which was put on the islet in 2015. He apparently contributed to the reunification and liberation of Vietnam. You can learn more about him in this article.

From there we hiked up the mountain, which took us about 40 minutes coming up and down. The view from the top was pretty amazing!

We then made our way down but we didn't have time to swim at Ti Top Island since we would go to another area to swim and kayak at. Eunhee and I were hot from the heat and humidity so we couldn't wait to get into the water. From there, most of us took the small boat back to our cruise boat to get changed except the group of five Chinese people that Thang couldn't find (as mentioned earlier). We rested for about an hour in our cabins before Thang let us know that kayaking was the next activity. All of the people from our cruise boat got back into the small boat and had a nice ride to our kayaking area.

After we were told what we could do, Eunhee and I got into our kayak and we just admired the scenery all around us. Since Eunhee wasn't a great swimmer, I would joke around and rock the boat a bit to try and freak her out. After a couple of times, I thought that was enough and let her enjoy the scenery. Haha!

Sadly, Eunhee couldn't get into the water since our kayaking area was in the middle of the ocean. However, I had to jump in to get refreshed and the water was really nice! I just wish Eunhee could have enjoyed it with me.

After we swam and kayaked, we went back to our cruise boat to rest. Dinner would be coming up next! We got on the sundeck and took in the beautiful scenery at night and were mesmerized by how quiet it was. We could see various other vessels lit up as it got darker and darker.

Halong Bay at Twilight

Getting darker

Then we ate dinner and rested before we tried our shot at squid fishing. Squid fishing was pretty simple. We just got a pole, no bait, and a hook. It was like competing in the lottery. The chances of catching something was REALLY small. But lo and behold, Eunhee caught a squid and she was the ONLY one on our boat that was able to.

A very tiny squid that Eunhee caught!

Just before she caught the squid

After squid fishing, we went to sleep and rested for the next day. The next morning, we had breakfast and then went back onto the small boat and headed to a cave. Eunhee and I were both expecting the cave to be small and interesting but we didn't expect how big it was going to be. We were pretty stunned at how tall and wide it was with various stalactites and stalagmites lining up the astounding mystery of God's creation. We were thoroughly impressed and it was definitely the cherry on top of this fantastic experience. Here are some various pictures of what we saw:

Myself exploring a cave!

We are so short compared to the height of the cave!

How enormous and beautiful it was!

Outside the cave

Outside the cave

After we went caving, we had lunch and headed back to Halong Bay. It was totally worth the experience and I totally recommend anyone to give it a shot. You won't be disappointed!

Scott Worden (The L.A./Seoul Guy)

Instagram: l.a.seoulguy

Borrowing Money From Friends

Recently I lost a really good friend (or at least I thought he was a good friend) to an issue over money and his attitude behind it. From a worldly standpoint, I was totally in the right. From a Christian standpoint, I might have been partially wrong.

In November 2008, my friend borrowed W4,000,000 won ($3,734). He didn't tell me exactly what it was for but he said he needed to do it for business. A month later, he asked me for another W1,000,000 but I refused.

For the first two or three years, my friend felt bad that he wasn't able to pay me back. I mentioned that he could make a payment plan and pay me that way, but he said that he wanted to pay me back in a lump sum. He had a sense of pride I guess.

In 2013, he approached me with a proposal. He said that he thought we could write e-books together and with all of our books, we would be able to split the profits. The main reason my friend came up with this idea was so that he could help pay off his debt to me and I thought it was a good idea.

I wrote three books of my own and he wrote two books of his own. However, we expected to get more profit from the books that we wrote together. The books that we wrote together included two books about how to learn English (for ESL learners) and three children's books. The profits would go to my US bank account since the ebooks we submitted were through Amazon. We really expected the children's books to take off since our illustrations were good and we thought the dialogue was simple but useful for young children. Little did we know that we aimed a bit too young. We probably should have aimed at elementary school children instead of preschool children, so the books never took off since kids at that age don't use computers or kindles. Only their parents can show them the books on their phones or tablets. The books that we wrote by ourselves had mild success, but the children's books turned out to be an utter failure.

So my friend continued to be indebted to me and it made our get togethers more awkward over time. I remember one time when I went to his home and his wife was telling me how much they had to spend on rent, utilities, and other expenses. I was wondering why she brought that up but I was pretty sure she was trying to tell me that there was no way my friend was going to be able to pay the money back for quite some time.

Yet during the next few years my friend took his family (his wife and daughter) to Scotland to see his family, to Portugal to visit his mother who retired there, and bought a new TV that my wife noticed when we came over to his home one time. I never said anything but my wife and I didn't understand his attitude. He had the money to do those things but made no effort to pay any of his debt to me. We continued to let him slide.

My wife and I would go to my friend's area to have dinner with him, his wife, and his daughter and there was no talk about the books. My friend eventually stopped talking about it and then I told him on two occasions that I forgave his debt even though it was a big chunk of money that I lost. I honestly didn't want to lose a friendship over money even though I thought he was selfish and inconsiderate towards me. After the first time I mentioned forgiving him of his debt, he said that he still felt bad but he still planned to pay it back. Three months ago, when we had dinner together, I mentioned once again that I forgave his debt and that he didn't need to worry about it. He said that he wasn't a good friend in that area and that he "hoped" to pay me back sometime in the future (even less confident this time). He also said that he felt that I was "too nice" in this regard.

Well since he knew that I was a nice guy, he once again tested to see how far I would go with my understanding nature. Almost three weeks ago on a Monday morning at 8:00am, my friend kept texting me to see if I could talk really quick. I said that I was in class and I would talk to him later. He said to please call him back after 9:00am. That day was a bit busy for me since my wife and I were supposed to visit another friend who was in the hospital due to him having cancer. I called him while I was heading to the subway station after my morning classes. My friend said that his uncle passed away and he was asked to be a pallbearer. He said that he didn't have money for a flight ticket and asked if he could pull his profits from his book profits. #1 in order to do that I would have to be there in person to wire it to my Korean account. #2 Since I couldn't do that, I would have to pull money out of my bank account in Korea that I share with my wife, which I wasn't planning to do. I told him that I would ask my wife since that is a very huge decision to make. He pressured me to let him know before the day was over and I felt that was a bit bold and rude considering that he never paid me the W4,000,000 back. I met my wife at the subway station near our home to make our way to where my friend was in the hospital. I texted my friend that he had the gall to ask for the money after owing me W4,000,000. He acted very surprised that I would be upset and I told him that I would call him later. Once again, he pressured me to get back to him by the end of the day.

My wife said that I shouldn't have to pay him the money back, but she was curious how much profit he made from his books and how much profit I made. After spending three hours checking my bank statements and Amazon, I came up with a conservative estimate. I made about $3,500 from our books and he made a maximum of $1,200 but could have been less. My feeling was that yes, he did make some profit from his books but how could he honestly ask for that money after he made me go 10 years without paying the original debt? I even forgave that debt and said that he didn't need to pay it back, so why would he try to claim money that he didn't deserve? Most of my friends agreed with my rationale except one. He said that if I forgave the debt, then I should have given him the book profits. He quoted Matthew 5:42 (never turn away a friend who wants to borrow from you) and Luke 6:42 (love your enemies and lend to them without expecting anything in return).

But I never expected him to pay me back and I was okay with that. Why should I give him more money and reward him for taking advantage of me already? I've treated him to dinner or coffee more often than he has treated me (NOTE: he paid sometimes including my birthday this year) and my wife and I always went to his area to meet him and his wife for dinner. And this was all after he had been indebted to me. However, I didn't care about those things. Friendship means sacrifice. On the other hand friendship doesn't mean to take advantage of the other person and I'm tired of always being too nice and people walking all over me.

I emailed him a very direct letter explaining that I wouldn't be giving him the money and if he wanted to talk about it, we could either text or meet in person. I wasn't going to have him talk over me on the phone and I wanted my wife to hear everything. He obviously didn't like it and unfriended me on Facebook and unfollowed my Instagram page. I've heard nothing from him since then which is too bad. I was very sad when he unfriended me but my wife said "Well, you wiped the dirt from your hands." She felt that he chose money over our friendship. Maybe I could have given him the $1,200 but I wasn't going to take money out from a bank account that I share with my wife. That's not fair to my wife or myself. It's truly sad and disheartening. We had been friends for 13 years and he was one of my groomsmen. I truly hope we can be friends again, but I will not contact him since I don't believe in one-sided friendships. When it comes to friendships, quality is much better than quantity.

Advice: Never lend a large amount of money to friends. Either you give it as a gift and don't expect to get it back or you don't lend it at all. It's not worth losing a friendship over.


Scott Worden (The L.A./Seoul Guy)

Instagram: l.a.seoulguy