I hadn’t planned to go to Halong Bay.  But now here we were, walking the streets of Cat Ba Island, being turned away by yet another hotel as late afternoon light slid sideways onto Jessica’s face.

Cat Ba Waterfront

“What do you think we should do?” I asked.
 

Jessica and I had met the night before at a hostel in Hanoi.  A backpacker from Taiwan, she had just arrived in town (I had been here most of a week) and we soon found ourselves in conversation in the crowded lobby.  Long story short:  I hadn’t planned to go to Halong Bay because the standard tour there was a little pricey for my current budget (plus I had already visited once, three years earlier).  But in talking with Jessica, whose plans for the coming days were still taking shape, we decided to set out for Halong Bay together.  We would leave in the morning, ditching the package tour and doing it on our own.
 

Relaxed scene in Hanoi

The next day, as part of our money saving strategy, we walked to the bus station.  It was a sweaty endeavor, taking us through Hanoi’s bustling urban scenery, which I love.  At the station, however, it transitioned to a stress-inducing endeavor, for here we learned it was the wrong station.  With five minutes to spare before our bus was to depart (we had already bought tickets), we hailed two motorcycle taxis, took our seats behind the drivers, and swerved wildly to a point two miles to the south.   
 

We made the bus.  The bus, however, was overbooked, and so we traveled to the coast, two hours away, like a package of sardines.  But this does not matter in budget travel—not for a mere two hours, not when you almost didn’t make the bus at all.
 

From the bus we boarded a ferry to Cat Ba Island, and then on the island we boarded a bus to take us into Cat Ba Town.  This was our final destination, sort of.

Cat Ba town is a gateway to Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Cat Ba Island

I say sort of because one doesn’t really arrive until he has a place to stay.  Jessica and I had decided to travel to Cat Ba on a Friday.  Unfortunately, this happens to be the same day all of Vietnam travels to Cat Ba.  Most hotels were full, and those that weren’t had raised their prices several fold for the weekend.  We had arrived, in other words, in a budget traveler’s version of hell.

We searched diligently for a cheap room.  Receptionists sneered at us, passersby wished us luck, and the sun, which dipped lower and lower in the sky as we went from hotel to hotel, warned that we’d need to soon bite the bullet and pull out a $20 (instead of, say, a $5).  And so when I asked Jessica what she thought we should do, she, like me, thought it time we accept that we’d be settling for an expensive night.  And so we did.

Some of the 70 million people who visit Cat Ba each weekend (this number may, of course, be inflated, a rhetorical device to emphasis how hard getting a hotel room was)

Our bags in the room, we walked to the bay a block away to catch the remaining light of day.  During our hotel search, we had been thirsty but hadn't wanted to waste time getting a drink.  So now as I headed to the pier to take a few photographs before the light was gone, Jessica detoured to a drink stand.

Drinking on the Pier

“What would you like?” she asked as she veered away.

“A Coke,” I replied.

Two minutes later, as I hung over a railing to photograph a fishing boat, Jessica reached out her Coke-bearing hand.  I took the can, popped it open, and swung my head back, letting cold, carbonated liquid slide down my throat.  And if I recall correctly—and I’m pretty sure I do—the classic 1971 Coke commercial that declared, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company…”—well, it began playing in my head.  And I thought:  It’ll be alright...this awful business of paying $20 for a room will be alright.  Here I am beside a beautiful bay, on a Friday night, in Vietnam.  I’m with a new friend, and a cold Coke.  I can walk.  I can drink.  I'm seeing the world and I'm alive.

My Coke

Yes, it would be alright.

Sunset, Cat Ba Island

Joel Carillet, chief editor of Wandering Educators, is a freelance writer and photographer based in Tennessee. He is the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. To learn more about him, visit www.joelcarillet.com.