Halong, halong must we sing this song

The weather was cool and overcast as we set off towards Halong bay, in the very northeast of Vietnam. And the weather was what made events unexpected.
The plan was to take a boat from Halong Bay to the Island of Camp Ba. However, the authorities deemed the wind too strong for tourist boats to go out, and a decision was made: Either stay overnight in Halong town (which is a rather eventfree and ugly place) and hope against hope for better weather the following day; or head south to Ninh Binh, and there take a canoetrip along the river and its surrounding hills and rice patties. We wholeheartedly choose the latter, but before we took off we stopped for coffee. Or so I thought.
Apparently Vietnam is the second largest (after Brazil) exporter of coffee in the world, and we were handed several samples, more than I care to recall, of what different kinds of coffee they had to offer. But no, it wasn't different selections of beans and roasting techniques, various methods of harvesting or drying or any other way of making coffee taste differently. No, here they use coffee and mix it with one or more of ingredients such as sugar, condensed milk, coconut, cocoa, fruits and so on. And they do so right with the beans, leaving no choice for the consumer. Never have I wanted a proper black coffee so badly.
With a few more hours on the bus we arrived for a late dinner, resulting in an early night. The stairs at the hotel went in all directions, twisting and turning, with dead ends and unexpected plateaus. It was like it was designed by M.C. Escher.
Next morning we set out on the Ngo Dong river, being gently rowed (by foot, rather than hand) upstream, past rice patties and steep limestone cliffs, egrets and fishermen, bridges and hawkers. At some points we even went underground for some unexpected caving. The floating salespeople were, as usual, very persistent, and since it was already past 10 o'clock, I figured I'd go for a beer while gently being rowed down the stream. A soft and slightly touristy way to compensate for the lack of seeing the islands of Halong Bay, and soon we left one former Vietnamese capitol in favour of the current.