Day 23 - Ha Long Bay

After breakfast we jumped in our luxury van for the 3 hour trip to our cruise departure point, along the way stopping at a "rest stop" by this stage I'm sure you would have all worked out now that a rest stop here really just means another place where they try to sell you things you don’t need. To reach the bathroom, you’re sent down an escalator, then forced to weave through a maze of pearl displays before finally finding your way out, only to have to walk the same direction back to reach your van again.  What I think happens is the drivers get a small kickback if anyone from their vehicle purchases something as we all have a tag given to us when get get off which lists our license plate of the vehicle.  It’s all part of the experience, I suppose, but sometimes it felt more like an obstacle course than a rest stop. 

Once leaving there it was only a 5 or 10 minute drive to our departure spot we arrived at 11am which a departure time of 12pm, so we had plenty of time up our sleeves to walk around and check out some of the mini marts. I decided to buy some drinks from the mini mart as we figured it would be cheaper than buy them on boat. Turns out I was right as it was 3 times the price on the boat.  We caught a jet boat to our cruise ship about 20 minutes later than we were suppose to.  The ride was pretty good, being able to take in the views along the way and really soaking it all in, I've wanted to see these Ha Long Bay for some time now and its good to finally be able to see it in person.   Arriving at the cruise ship we were greeted by a few staff next to the pool, we were given a briefing of the upcoming activities for today and given our room keys, walked up to our rooms to find a nice large spacious room with a balcony with a great view over the bay.  Went up on deck to check out the views of the bays, and it looked like we were on a cruise ship highway with all the cruise ships travelling in the same direction. 

We had lunch up in the ship restaurant, a buffet option, we chose a seat and sat down only to be told we had to move to a different location, with no reason as to why.  Every other table that was around was a 6 person set, but we liked the view at the seat we had picked. Later we eventually told there was a larger group from India which is why we had to move, still doesn't make sense.  When we finally went to get food, well some people just chose to select a heap of a certain food, not leaving much for other. On top of that there wasn't really many options of normal (western style) foods. Chips were cold as well which wasn't great either.

We got to go on a guided boat trip through a "cave" which was really just a tunnel through a cliff by boat, nice views and the guy rowing the boat started singing some nice soothing Vietnamese song. We then returned back to the boat before getting changed to head out on another boat to go kayaking and a swim. Gill, Mike and James headed out on the kayaks on their own and I headed out with Mum on a double kayak, we got to take in the views for about 15 minutes before turning around and heading back to the dock. Once back it was time for a quick swim, the water was fantastically warm, turns out only us 5 went swimming.  Eventually we had to head back to the boat where we could shower and change before heading up to the 4th deck to enjoy the views at sunset while enjoying some finger food... Wasn't really much finger food, turns out the big group seem to think that was also a buffet.

I sat upstairs on the top deck and just took in the views into the night before I decided it was time to head downstairs for dinner.  Dinner wasn’t much better. I wasn’t overly impressed with how things were run, and neither were some of the others. Dishes were coming out in random order, and parts of the meal arrived without the sides that were supposed to go with them. For example, the rice that was meant to come out with the second soup didn’t appear until we finally asked for it. Serving utensils were also missing, which made it even more chaotic. The whole thing almost felt like it was their first time serving a meal. There was plenty of other things that weren't great, but won't get into it here. 

We all headed to bed after dinner, we were all pretty tired after the travelling from yesterday and today, little did we know that there was going to be karaoke before on the floor, and little did we know that the large group seem to think it fine to be dancing around as well very loudly, at times I thought the ceiling above my bed was going to collapse. Despite the chaos, it was a day full of new sights and memories. I just hoped the karaoke wouldn’t last all night. Which thankfully at 10:30 it did finally stop.