We grab a quick breakfast in our lounge, and then find the end of the queue for our tour today. Normally we don’t do many ship’s tours but going independent is less easy in this part of the world.
We are taken by golf-buggy a couple of hundred yards down the pier, quite unnecessary but I suppose they need to keep people together. We jump onto Thành Nam 66 which is one of many hundred local boats all doing the same thing – tourism. We’re off around the incredible UNESCO World Heritage site.
Whilst the words “karst terrain fengling” didn’t mean anything to us before today, we’re not immune to the form. One only has to think of Francisco Scaramanga, aka the Man with the Golden Gun, or more specifically where he lived to recognise this natural phenomenon. Whilst the film was actually shot in Thailand, Ha Long Bay with the world’s largest collection, has 1133 distinct islands and is the place Fleming visualised and Brocolli & Saltzman intended to shoot, before politics intervened.
Back to today, we’re sailing under heavy skies so sadly no fabulous azure sea shots, but the limestone cliffs still look incredible. Our first stop is a cave, only discovered in 1993 by local fishermen, and added to the World Heritage register the following year. The government has made it very accessible (although not Accessible) with concrete steps and walkway.
Escaping from our group briefly we find a very different cave which is heavily grown over.
Then we commence an hour of scenic cruising around some of the other peaks, and slowly head back whilst we eat a traditional Viet Namese lunch of noodles, prawns, fried chicken, fried fish, fried cuttlefish and a mountain of sticky rice. Oh and proper Chinese grapefruit aka Pomelo (which incidentally is the Spanish word for normal grapefruit!)
Our afternoon is spent walking around the seaside resort which is being extensively redeveloped. It’s quite interesting to see both what’s been done so far, and CAD visions of the future.
Before dinner we enjoy a local show of five musicians playing music on authentic instruments. The we head upstairs to the Italian restaurant Caneletto for a change. This one is hidden in a corner of the buffet restaurant, but quite separate.
We have pear beetroot & walnut salad and meatballs, followed by chicken & mozzarella and red snapper, finishing with chocolate tart and tiramisu. All excellent tastes.
