Peter Bergdahl's Personal Blog

Two times a year it’s grasshopper season in Uganda and now in December it’s high season for them. They’re swarming everywhere and I can’t even open up my door without some of them flying in to the house.

Plenty of grasshoppers also mean plenty of food for lizards, birds and even human beings (you can buy grasshoppers in big sacks. I took this image with my phone camera just above the door to my house. It’s a gecko lizard enjoying a grasshopper almost of the same size as the gecko.

Grasshopper & Gecko in Uganda

I quite recently came to Uganda for a longer assignment and one thing is for sure – a rainfall is really a rainfall in Uganda and not just small showers.

Now, the drainage next to my house is also plugged with grass and dirt so it doesn’t drain all water quickly enough as you can see half way in to this video. I hesitated for a while before i ran up the stair because I knew what to expect.

I went on a four week trip to Indonesia and took the opportunity to visit the national museum in Jakarta.

It turns out (like i expected) that Indonesia has a very rich and interesting culture. Indonesia is now the country with the biggest Muslim population in the world but it hasn’t always been like that.

In the museum there are a lot of old Buddhist and Hindu relics, even more than Muslim relics which surprised me. Another unexpected  thing I noticed was they had many similarities with the Indians in North America, like for instance totem poles.

The most interesting or rather pleasant thing at the museum was however not very old, it was school children. I met several school classes with a bunch of wonderful kids that were simply amazing.

School Class At Jakarta National Museum

Above is a picture of the biggest class I met, it was buzzing around them and I had a great time there. I’m 190cm tall and come from Europe so I guess they found me interesting as well. I can count to more than 30 kids in the picture but it was more because I could not get all of them in the viewfinder.

So when you go to the Jakarta National Museum you should be prepared not only to see some old stuff but also meet the younger generation. It was great fun.

Bored to death I defied my desperate fear of heights and went out on the balcony to snap this image of Makati skyline from my hotel balcony.

Makati Skyline - Manila

I risked my life to take this image so I certainly hope you like it

Well, this post is long overdue because i visited Ha Long Bay a few months ago but since i believe the learning’s we made from the trip could be valuable for those of you going to Ha Long Bay and want to rent a private boat to roam around the bay.

Halong Bay Scenery

Please note: that this information is applicable if you rent a boat (day trip) by yourself and might not be applicable if you pay for a package through a travel agency and share a boat with others or stay overnight on the boat.

During our first trip in second half of November 2009 they asked for 2,000,000 Dong for a 6 hours trip but we negotiated it down to 1,100,000 Dong. November is low season and the price is cheaper.

In July 2010 they asked for 3,000,000 Dong for a full day trip and this time we managed to get it down to 2,000,000 Dong. Some locals told us it was an OK price, not high and not low. The locals also told us to make sure that the service charge is included in the price (which it was not in our case as it turned out) so we had to pay 250,000 Dong extra.

When the boat was about to depart in the morning it was nowhere to find, we had to wait 45 minutes after the stated time before the boat arrived. It turned out that they sold an “early morning trip” to some other tourists even though we paid for a full day trip so our trip started 45 minutes later than planned and they refused to deduct from the fee we negotiated the day earlier.

Later if the afternoon while it was still a few hours daylight remaining they headed back towards the shore. I requested that instead of heading back we go to a sand beach at one of the islands i visited a few years earlier. They told us that the beach was closed which was a big fat lie because i saw it just a few hours earlier when we passed it (i could even point in the direction of the beach). I challenged them and after some discussions they realized the futility to argue with me and they  agreed to turn around and go to the beach where we spent a couple of hours.

After the beach they started speeding back to shore but i asked why they were in a hurry back even though we paid for a whole day trip. They couldn’t give us an answer so again we argued with them and they slowed down so we could view the magnificent scenery.

Finally when it was about to get dark we headed back to shore and went back to the hotel after a very beautiful day.

Some learning’s:

• The prices depends greatly on the season (winter is low season and summer is high season)
• You can negotiate down their initial bid with  at least 30-40%, maybe more
• Verify if the service charge is included in the negotiated price or not
• You may have to be assertive sometimes because they might try their luck to make the trip shorter
• Also agree what will happen if the boat is delayed when you negotiate the fee before you sign the agreement. I suggest you try to negotiate how much to deduct for every 30 minutes the trip is delayed
• To save money you can buy the seafood in the local markets before you start the boat trip and ask the crew to cook the food on the boat. Expect fresh fish, crabs etc. to be at least 2-3 times more expensive if you buy it on the boat compared to the local market.

In the November trip we had no problem with late departure and we didn’t have any other issues either. Everything went smoothly on that trip. On the July trip we had a lot of problems with the crew trying to cheat like i described above but we still had a great time, Ha Long bay is truly a wonderful place which i highly recommend you visit.

Worth noting is that my wife is fluent in Vietnamese so we  could easily negotiate prices etc. due to this. You will probably have a harder time to make yourself understood than we had.

Have a nice trip to Ha Long Bay!