Highlights of Vietnam and Cambodia
Day Three – 19 January 2015
Weather: sunny, 23
Despite being out like a light at 9:30, I couldn’t sleep passed 4 am. I tried but finally gave up at 5 am and got up to type and pack up for the day. We have to pack an overnight bag for the night on the Junk (which Thom assures us is not ‘junk’). The company we’ll be using has six ships and there’s a chance we’ll have the ship to ourselves. If we don’t, he said we’ll be the majority.
I went down to breakfast by 6:15 and tried the danishes. Delicious. I put my luggage out for 7 and went down to the lobby for our 8 am departure. Thom said it’s 168 km to Ha Long Bay but that 168 km in North America goes a lot faster, so he says it will take about 4 hours to get there. The drive through Monday morning traffic in Hanoi was as interesting as ever. One thing to be said about a city of scooters. Traffic moves fast. There were no traffic jams. If the traffic gets snarled up, the scooters just use the sidewalk.
We were out of the city fairly fast. Thom said that Hanoi was the largest city in Vietnam by area but that Saigon was larger by population. There are 92 million in the entire country with 10 million in Saigon and 8 million in Hanoi.
So, that answers my next question. How many scooters are there in Hanoi?
Eight million.
Who knew?
Thom entertained us with information on the Vietnamese language.
He said there were 4 fewer letters in their language. They have no F, J, W or Z. But they do have a number of accents that can change the sound and meaning of a word. For example, Ma has six meanings depending on the accent used including ghost, horse, miserable and mom.
Yeah. You really have to be careful how you use that word when referring to your mother in law.
We passed through the city of Bah Linh which is the factory centre. There were a number of recognizable names here like Canon and Samsung.
My phone and camera are home!
Didn’t see Nike. My sneakers are not happy about that.
Thom explained the optionals available and said there was no pressure to take any of them. He went from person to person and took a list of who wanted to do what. The recommendation was to pay in cash as he didn’t have a credit card machine and we wouldn’t pay until Saigon. They didn’t cost a lot and we were free to opt out at the last moment which was really nice.
I decided to skip the optionals in Hue in order to have some downtime (re…watching playoff football). I will take the optional to My Son temples in Hoi An, the cooking demo and dinner and the tunnels in Saigon. Don’t think they total more than $100.
He gave us a run down for tomorrow as well and said that we get a brunch on the boat and an early dinner, but no time for lunch, so he said to eat a lot at the brunch. LOL
Actually, he said he picked up some snacks the night before and spent two hours trying to find snacks that were not made in China. He handed out some rice chips as a teaser. He said that Vietnam is the world leader in rice exports and the second largest exporter of coffee.
Who knew? Oh wait. I did. They told us that in Panama.
Brazil is number one but Vietnam is the world leader in the export of Robusta coffee.
Thom said his father grows coffee. He said that if anyone wanted to bring coffee home that they should wait until Saigon. Not because the coffee is any better there (it’s the same) but because it means we don’t have to carry it that far.
We made a rest stop at a large embroidery factory. Really nice bathrooms and a café with a large selection of snacks of every description. I got M&Ms.
We got back on the road at 10:30 and Thom passed around a sheet showing how the Vietnamese people started as the hill tribe people of the north and slowly expanded south. The expansion ended in 1867. The Khmer had the south part of the country for some time but the Chinese eventually pushed them out. A third people that once occupied the central region had earlier been squeezed out by the Chinese and Khmer.
Ha Long means descending dragon and is where they believe it came back to earth to save the Vietnamese people. The area became famous after a French movie called Indochine. It was also the site for two Bond films. It is part of the Gulf of Tonkin. Sixty percent of the gulf belongs to Vietnam and the other 40% is in China. This is a problem for fishermen who might not have GPS and end up crossing the border and getting arrested.
The city of Ha Long is visible through the haze as we approach the pier (which is on an island connected by a causeway). Thom said that the hotels there were struggling since the boats began to offer overnight trips. This meant people would spend their entire time on the bay in the boats and go straight back to Hanoi. As a result, only a limited number of ships can get licenses for overnight cruises.
The pier has a number of boats. Thom said there is another pier but that the quality of those ships were not quite as high as these. He said we were not on the most luxurious boat but were not far off. He said it is a 4 star boat.
We stopped and went into the boat’s office where everyone was treated to a glass of tea. Then we noticed that five women on our tour had all dressed for the occasion.
Guess they never thought to call each other this morning.
We were given tags with our room numbers on it and walked across the pier to the ship.
It’s a sweet little ship. The room is downright cute.
And I can see why Thom thought it best that we not take luggage. As a solo, I probably could have managed my luggage in here no problem, but a couple would have a harder time. The bed pretty well takes up the entire room. It also has a bathroom with a shower. No TV. Spotty wifi.
We headed out by 1 pm and could see the pinnacles and islands in the distance.
We were directed up the third floor dining room for our lunch buffet. The cruise director is a young and eager young man and he did an introduction of the boat’s staff.
We started to enter the islands and I was being tugged between eating and taking photos, so I popped out, took photos, popped back in to eat, popped out, popped back in for dessert. Gorgeous.
With only 34 people on board, it’s very spacious on deck. The sun deck is great.
We sailed until 3 pm and then offloaded onto the tender for a short ride to the floating village. It took two trips and once we were all there, we all loaded into row boats, six people per boat. We had our Whispers with us and had to wait for Thoms’ boat to catch up to us so that he could give us a commentary.
He said the village we started at had 14 families and about 34 people. That is down from 300 as they are being relocated to the mainland slowly. They expect it’s inevitable as the children are educated on the mainland and once they get a taste of life on the mainland, they don’t want to go back.
Much like the children of the people on the reed islands on Lake Titicaca.
We rowed by several other villages among the pinnacles and even explored a hole in a rock complete with stalactites hanging from above.
We rowed back to the village and were back on board the boat in time to watch the sunset.
All I can say is wow.
When I went looking for a tour to do during the winter, I had read as far as Day Four for this tour (this cruise) and stopped. I didn’t need to see the rest of it and called my travel agent.
And it has paid off in spades. A gorgeous day and amazing scenery on a comfy boat with incredible staff. There was a cooking demonstration after the sunset but I wanted to download my photos. All 400 of them.
Dinner was at 7 pm. I went up at 6:30 to find half the women on the tour dancing in the dining room.
Thom got video. We had to choose between fish or beef earlier in the day. We had pumpkin soup, salad, and a panacoda for dessert.
The 4 am morning hit me around 8:30 and dinner broke up at 9. I went back to my room and sorted stuff out. I found two plugs to charge the batteries. I was out like a light before 10.
Go to Day Four
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