Our two day/one night trip to Hạ Long Bay was incredibly picturesque, with the possible exception of our short stay in Hạ Long itself.
The agency and the guide book had warned us that, at that time, Hạ Long was not well served with Western-standard accommodation.
We chose to stay at the best available at the time, the Hạ Long Hotel, which is depicted above. That picture was the best possible angle one could find of the place.
The hotel, which had probably seen better days even in the early post-war period, had been a favoured haunt of Soviet tourists. The signage and information in all of the rooms was in Vietnamese, French and Russian only. I derived what little instruction we needed from the French versions. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
It’s a shame I didn’t photograph the room, which had a rudimentary look to it. But the biggest shame of all is that I didn’t photograph the refectory-style dining room, with long tables and benches. It reminded me of an austere English public school refectory; or perhaps a well-appointed prison dining hall.
The place was almost completely deserted when we were there in March 1996, giving the “refectory” an especially eerie feel. Had the place been fully occupied, dinner time might have looked more like this:
On looking up our Hạ Long Hotel in the old 1990s guide book and then Googling the address, I am pretty sure that the site is now the rather stunning-looking and very well-reviewed Ha Long Plaza Hotel. It must have had a comprehensive makeover since our visit, for some obscure reason. So I’m guessing that the old dining hall is now lost for ever in the mists of time.
But let us now put all of that to one side and return to the stunningly beautiful journey that was our two day/overnight visit to Hạ Long Bay.
