19 Mar 2025 - Ha Long Bay
Day nine of our Pandaw trip. A leisurely morning without an excursion . At 10 am the guide Alex gave a presentation on Vietnamese history, which was not quite as bad as I feared it would be. However only eight people attended it and it was almost impossible to see his slides as the room was so light.
After lunch the boat soon entered Ha Long Bay haing passed by the city of Haiphong, which was full of shipyards on one side and an absolutely immense new construction city on the other side of the river. It looked as though it would house at least 100,000: the guide just said that these flats and houses were being bought for investment, seemed odd.
Then we were in Ha Long Bay, where it’s wonderful limestone mountains emerged from the calm sea. Ha Long Bay has amazing island scenery with its 2,000 dramatic limestone islands and extraordinary rock formations dating back 20 million years. Tourism had come to this place en mass since 2011 and we reckoned there were about 100 tourist ships there. The sun was just about out , so we were in luck and soon after 3 pm, we went out in a kayak, David doing all the work. Only seven out of the 21 ventured out in this way, six Brits and one American. The others did their tour of the caves and lake behind in a sort of a bamboo craft. The scenery on this was really magnificent.
Once back on board, we had an early Rum and orange and sat up on deck waiting for happy hour for yet another drink. Then dinner with four of the Americans before the second half of the film Indochine
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20 Mar 2025 - Ha Long Bay
We woke up at 7 am to the serene beauty of Ha Long Bay.. At 9 am we took a launch, somewhat decrepit, to a small village, Viet Hai Village, which have been built because of tourism about 10 years ago. Before that it was just a small fishing hamlet. Once on the jetty most of us went in electric buggies along a very scenic Road to the village: a few hardy specimens cycled this distance and Ian ran it. We walked through some fields in the village seeing the different crops they were growing and past a cemetery, on which Alex had much to say, a lot of it incomprehensible. We then passed the school on the way.
We then went to an establishment where thousands of tiny fish nibbled at the dry skin or dirt on our feet. Chris had to sit on three stools to get down to do this. Where as most of the rest just squatted on one stool. David found the fish very hilarious or rather they tickled his feet and afterwards he was convinced his feet were very much cleaner than they had been beforehand. Then the scenic ride in the buggy back to the jetty and thence back to our boat.
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After lunch we stopped at a fish farm, at Ha Long Bay , where there were some 20 large tanks separated by fairly narrow planks along which the punter had to walk: this was a slight challenge for Chris but other people had problems with their balance too.
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We then motored on for another 15 minutes or so before being taken off in the ships boat to a small sandy beach which was in the shade. 21 little blue chairs have been laid out on this and there was a free flowing cocktail plus pizza and nibbles.
One fellow passenger, a German went for a long swim and two or three other men also went in for a dip. Chris waited until 15 minutes before we were due back on the boat and then went in and really enjoyed it, the water being much warmer than she had thought. She was then able to return to the boat with just a towel wrapped round her wet bathing costume.
There were more cocktails at 6 o’clock by which time we had done most of the packing necessary for the next morning then the daily briefing by Alex and the farewell to the 19 crew, followed by 10 minutes of most of the passengers and all the crew dancing around. We enjoyed talking to Wes and Marlow during this and then continuing talking to Marlow during dinner.
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21 Mar 2025 - Ha Long Bay
Morning sail to Tuan Chau Jetty, near Ha Long Bay
We left the boat at at 9 am for a coach journey towards Hanoi. With sadness, we said goodbye to the magnificent crew.
The coach took one and a half hours to get to a tourist centre Full of merchandise and we were left there for more than an hour before lunch was served there at 11:45 am the actual food was not too bad but the restaurant was a trifle communistic. During the hour we had, seemingly, to shop we sat outside in the sunshine and read our iPads.
At 1 pm, we ended this enforced stop and set off in the coach for the airport where four people were catching internal flights and about six people were then left at the international terminal. So we arrived in Hanoi around 3 pm.
We were allocated a room on the 15th floor of the Pan Pacific Hotel. But found that this had a leak in the bathroom: fortunately this was before I had unpacked too much from the small suitcase. So David went down to reception and obtained a room on the 17th floor. We then went in for afternoon tea at the executive club lounge, this being on the same floor.
We went out for an hours walk before it got dark and soon after this went down to the executive lounge again for Tapas and a drink of wine. Here we stayed for 90 minutes and had a cup of coffee as well before returning into the room, writing this diary and catching up on the news as we had not had Wi-Fi for several days on the boat.
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22 Mar 2025 to Siem Reap
Hanoi to Siem Reap. We had a leisurely breakfast in the executive lounge of the hotel with its super views over the lake and Temple, a really magical view despite some pollution but not as bad as on our previous stay here.
At 10 am, we were taken to the airport in a very comfortable car and had a two hour wait for our flight to Siem Reap