We started the day with breakfast at the Hong Ngoc hotel – lots of the usual continental breakfast food like pastries and fruit, and then some unusual foods like spaghetti, chips and of course, congee.
The bus to Ha long Bay left at 8, so we all piled on, waved merrily on by the street sellers who were back in force, wielding more booty: fans, necklaces, bags, as well as the expected tshirts.
Halong Bay
The trip took about four hours, including an obligatory stop at a ceramics factory for a quick tour and exit through the gift shop, There was some nice lacquerware, but the painted ceramics were quite mixed! R bought me a small soy sauce bowl with a short-winged dragonfly on it, which was cute. The much-discussed cafe had a good-looking menu, with cappuccino etc, so a few of us ordered one, only to find it was actually a “cappuccino” from Jarrah-style powder and warm water from a thermos, rather than anything approximating real coffee! Ah well, it was warm and had caffeine!
Next stop: the harbour of Ha Long Bay. We boarded our boat, the Ngoc Bien 6, our home for the next 20 hours or so. The boat had three levels: the top level was all su deck, the second held the dining room/bar and a couple of cabins, and the lower level had the rest of the sleeping cabins, including ours. The rooms were quite comfortable for boat accommodation, with a double bed and an ensuite wet room style bathroom, with the obligatory shower over the loo. At least there was enough hot water, which we were happy about later on.
Cocktails with lunch
We gathered for lunch in the dining room, and were regaled with eleven dishes for lunch including steamed prawns, salad, fish, sesame pork, and finishing with watermelon for dessert. The bar was pretty well-stocked, but no sparkling wine or cider, so I was forced to resort to cocktails — what a tragedy! The drink prices were expensive for Vietnam, but pretty good to Australian eyes – $6 for a cocktail!
boat-shops
There were lots of ladies in little rowboats traversing the bays between the cruise boats, selling snacks and drinks. They would row up to the side of the boat and call out “you buy something? You buy?” but their prices were amazingly high! One lady was asking 150,000 dong for a chocolate bar (about $7.50) – even worse than airport prices, if you can believe it.
The “cannon”
The two activities for the afternoon were the cave walk and the kayaking tour of the bay. The cave walk was pretty amazing, even though it started off with 300 steps to get up to the entrance to the cave! We were treated to stalactites and stalagmites and some pretty awesome rock formations, including what one tour leader called “the cannon” and ours was calling something else!
view from the cave
The kayak tour was fabulous, even though our arms and backs are all pretty sore now! W headed out between the bigger boats and were able to go through a small cave area (Monkey Cave?) into a gorgeous secluded bay, where the only entrance was the water under the cave. Then we went for a loop around another cave formation before taking our aching bodies back to the boat.
Kayaking in Halong Bay
We were pretty keen for a swim earlier on, but after seeing all the rubbish in the water as we were kayaking a few had second thoughts! Most of us headed back in for a dip before dinner, but not many were game enough to put their heads under water.
A quick shower to clean up, and it was time for pre-dinner cocktails! The conversation meandered a lot around differences in vocabulary between the Brits and Aussies, with some startled discussion of whether a “lolly” was a lollipop or any kind of sweet! And let’s not get into the doona/duvet controversy.
carved fruit and vegetable “bouquet” plus crab and prawns!
Dinner was amazing, even more so than lunch! The chef on the boat had created a spectacular spread, with stuffed crab, bbq’d prawns, carved fruit and vegetables, marinated fish served in a “net” created from a carrot, salads, a curry, and fruit for dessert. All accompanied by cocktails of course!
Fish in carrot “net”
After dinner, T our guide showed a couple of videos, intended I think to show us something about Vietnamese culture. The first one would have probably been okay for an 18-25 year old audience, but we weren’t really interested in a pair of bmxing kids who were drinking snake blood and blowing things up. The second one went down like a lead balloon too, but for different reasons, with a hilariously purple prose narrator who sounded like he’d been to the William Shatner school of narration, leaving random long pauses in the middle of the overwritten sentences, One more metaphor about the Ha Long Bay hills being like the “lonely Pyramids of Egypt” and there would have been blows.
One by one, the group snuck off upstairs to the sundeck to gasbag, before heading off to our cabins to nurse our very full bellies.
Two Weeks Away 