Did I just bribe someone?

Last weekend we took our first trip to Ha Long Bay, a 3 hour drive east of Hanoi and a candidate for one of the new seven natural wonders of the world. It's certainly beautiful - mainland Vietnam ends at the port city of Ha Long, and extending out nearly 100km further into the ocean are over 2,000 limestone islands rising up in the bay. The bay is something of a labyrinth, and it would be incredibly easy to get completely lost in there for days. Fortunately the boat that we were on managed to navigate the waters just fine, and we made it back to shore safely after about 24 hours on board. Out in the bay we toured around for a while on the boat, stopping at one large island that had a massive network of caves (they seem to be big on caves in Vietnam), and also going kayaking and swimming. The kayaking was great - we were able to really get the feel of the bay from down in the water and explore a bit on our own (though still surrounded by the tourist boats). We even found our way through a cave to a hidden lagoon, which we were very proud of, despite it also being filled with other kayakers. Sunset in the bay was spetacular as well, with the sun fading behind green islands and traditional sailing junks. Here's one of my favorites:
We're certainly going to go back, mostly to see Cat Ba island, the largest island in the bay, which also has a small town and a national park for hiking and biking. I managed to take a good number of pictures before my camera battery died, so they're up on Picasa now.

However, this lovely weekend was nearly stopped before it got started by my being a bit of an idiot (yet again). In Vietnam, anytime you do or buy anything major, especially including staying overnight somewhere, you need your passport. Naturally, I forgot mine, and realized this about an hour into the bus ride to Ha Long. After consulting somewhat frantically with Alison and having her tell me that I probably wouldn't be able to get on the boat, I decided to ask the tour guide and see what happened. He didn't look too happy, obviously, but after a phone call he turned back to me and said something to the effect of "It's okay, you just pay for passport." Then when we got to the dock and everyone else was handing over their passports, the official says to me "No passport, you pay for passport." So I handed him a 200,000 Dong note (a little over $12), and miraculously, everything was resolved nicely and I was on the boat a few minutes later. Now that's an effective system.