Another night of sleep scarcity, despite my best attempts to assure a long deep slumber. Maybe it’s the constant drone from the air conditioning or the motion of the ship or.. no, I don’t know.so fref
Still, even with the clocks going back overnight it was 6am before I emerged to find us gliding between steep sided islands murky in the morning mist. It was all rather picturesque but breakfast beckoned.
My first time in one of the shirts washed via the magical machine. Annoyingly it seems to smell worse than it did when it went in. Maybe wash/rinse needs to be wash/wash/rinse. In fairness those four shirts had done a marathon in Kowloon as well as the flight from the UK so I was testing the limits somewhat.
Obviously rather than changing for a sparkly clean shirt I sprayed on some Lynx.
The ship can’t dock in this part of Vietnam. Instead we go ashore via tender, a lengthy process carefully marshalled by the ship’s crew. I was interested to know what the tenders would look like and, popping up to take a photograph after breakfast, I found out. They look rather similar to the lifeboats that used to adorn the sides of the ship.
I had wondered why some of those have windows and some don’t. It’s not a luxury lifeboat design, they just do double duty. I guess for the cruise line it’s better than trusting to local resources and it also gives the crew practice launching (and retrieving) them.
The newspaper sniplets at breakfast are irritatingly dated yesterday and on Thursday morning I read about something that would happen “at 2pm on Wednesday”. So seven hours before you printed this thing, yeah? It didn’t help that I’d already seen the outcome from that because, even without internet access, I can stay informed.
On the plus side, I just invented the word sniplets. I also found proper bacon.
I can in passing confirm that avoiding the water from the room’s bathroom tap has done the trick and I’ve been able to regain the weight lost on Monday. Although with the food availability as it is, that was inevitable anyway.
“Singapore hosts … summit, overshadowed by … war” Well, lets hope it’s all over by the time I get there in around 12 days. 11 days? I’ve lost track. The elevators on the ship have the day of the week written on the carpets, and they get changed at midnight every night. Clearly I’m not the only one. To an extent it’s pointless trying to keep track and plan ahead, the ship’s routine almost demands you take each day as it comes. The missing words are ASEAN and trade, so less worrying than it might seem.
Halong Bay doesn’t resemble a smoggy Mablethorpe. This is an all natural early morning sea mist:
Reaching the shore I found out that sadly the waterfront is actually very reminiscent of Mablethorpe – especially at 9am before anything opens. A mile long walk in increasing heat and the realisation I’d stupidly left both sunhat and water bottle on board meant I hunted down some coffee.
It came cold, with ice. I might have tried it cold but I’m not risking the local ice. Sadly the waitress didn’t speak English or French so I paid 25 grand for a coffee I didn’t even drink. That means my brief period as a millionaire, for 400 yards from the ATM to the coffee shop, came to a sad and final close.
The Mablethorpe comparison disregards some obvious differences. The restaurants here sell fresh seafood, so fresh you can pick which one you want while it’s still swimming. The mopeds are ubiquitous and every 100 yards I was accosted by a rider, suggesting I should hop on to the back and go for a ride. Didn’t know I was so popular. Mablethorpe was never this hot or humid either, even with the cloud cover I can feel a strong risk of sunburn.
The Vietnamese are friendly people, the locals inured to the sight of foreigners but smiling and showing signs of being welcome. As with Hainan the tiny children are dressed impractically, little dressed up dolls. Then again walking into the Wyndham Hotel (for the wifi, of course) the adult Vietnamese women were dressed up like dolls too, short lacey dresses or long traditional looking ones that revealed more modern lace beneath.
Coming into Halong Bay the obvious attraction was the islands. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of them, all picturesque and begging for a boat tour. The ship organised expensive ones or the moment I reached shore a local offered a cheaper (but no doubt still overpriced) one. I passed. The other thing to do is take a taxi across the lovely bridge to the downtown area, but I’ve seen enough local markets and shopping malls in the last few days. So a Vietnamese coffee, some wifi and a return to the ship.
The Vietnamese coffee cost significantly more than the ice cold one. That’s partly because it’s in the Wyndham so I’m paying 4-5 star hotel prices, but.. it’s worth it. A very slow pour espresso served with thick warm condensed milk, which you add to taste. It’s a good job I didn’t have this with dinner as even at 10am it may stop me sleeping tonight.
But that’ll do for now, back to the ship!