Day 7

Today was definitely not how we had expected but it was interesting nonetheless. The sleep on our cruise was very relaxing and mostly quiet, although you could sometimes hear coughing in the cabins next door. I had seriously considered doing sunrise tai chi this morning but didn’t end up waking as early as I’d planned. I did however do my morning stretches up on the top deck. According to Simone, she had been on the deck earlier and no one else did the tai chi either!

Breakfast this morning ended up being a buffet instead of table service but was still enjoyable. The main activity this morning was kayaking but since the weather wasn’t the greatest, Ted and I decided to stay behind and relax on the top deck and enjoy the serenity. Apparently the kayaking was more physical than most had anticipated so relaxing in the quiet Halong Bay still sounded like the better option to us.

We needed to have our bags outside the cabin and check out by 9am, but since this cruise loves to spoil us with food, they offered us a “lunch” at 10:30am! It was actually somewhat difficult eating again so soon but a free lunch is a free lunch. I felt bad though when I ordered a Vietnamese coffee and when the waitress said she didn’t have sufficient change, I said “that’s okay” but she thought I meant that she could keep all the change! I felt embarrassed about the confusion and left a tip!

We then all boarded a tender to take us back to the cruise port. I spoke to one of the waitresses on the tender back who was returning home who asked us about our itinerary and travels. Google translate was a huge help in and it reminded me to use it more frequently to avoid any future confusion. Back at port we bade farewell to the crew, as well as Robin and Simone, and caught a Grab to our next accommodation here in Ha Long.

When I originally booked this holiday, the area where we were staying in Ha Long looked like a beautiful modern resort-type area. As our car came closer to the hotel, we were somewhat confused by the huge hotels, casinos and restaurants…and no people. It was even more obvious when we pulled onto the street where our hotel is located which was lined with empty restaurants and sidewalks. Somewhat confused, we entered the hotel to check in.

As we’d suspected, this area has been hit very hard by Covid. We were beginning to regret coming here, but when the receptionist told us about how all the nearby business had been abandoned, and the area was struggling with only 10-20% occupancy, we felt bad about this, and grateful that we could offer our small contribution to help.

After a short wait, we were taken to our room which is small but beautiful. We were unsure about what to do with our time, as Ted had also spoken to someone on the cruise who had mentioned there was nothing open here in Ha Long. We walked down to the nearby beach area which was quite sad to see, due to the amount of work done and huge potential for this area, which was now devoid of people.

We decided to walk two kilometres towards the nearby town as we had seen what looked like some business open. Most of them, that were only frequented by locals, didn’t seem very appealing although we did have lunch at a boutique style pasta restaurant where we were the only customers. Google translate has been so helpful in telling the locals that I’m vegetarian because trying to use diagrams and hand signals doesn’t seem to be quite working! We also went to a shoe store to buy myself some new shoes (mine are wearing thin) but the largest size they had was only size 8!

We took a taxi back to the hotel (no seat-belts!) before relaxing…a lot. We are still in two minds about having come here. Whilst it was good to come and support local businesses, the lack of activities has made it dull. I’m trying to convince myself that this is a good, quiet change of scenery after Hanoi.

We walked to a nearby corner restaurant for a simple dinner (the owner was very appreciative) before taking a walk along the beachfront. Strangely there were a lot of beach parties still running, with only a small handful of people in each.

Tomorrow night we head off on our overnight train to Hue and, with all due respect to Ha Long, we will be grateful to move on.Read more