We’ve visited a fair few beautiful places in the world. Hạ Long Bay is well up there with the most stunning.
This is another of those days when the words in my log are few, the photographs many and really you don’t need many words:
Stunning scenes on Hạ Long Bay, headline picture, above and below.Health & Safety had not got started, let alone gone mad at that grottoInside (above) and outside (below) the grotto
Went on a cruise at Hạ Long Bay on “Yellow Dragon” boat – misty but pleasant – went to “new grotto” [i.e. newly discovered in 1996] – very slippery climb due to mist– went into grotto etc. Super lunch on boat – then long drive back to Hanoi. Overnight in Royal Hotel
Lunch on the boat, me & Thung (above), then return journey to Hanoi pictures (below)
This was one of those picturesque travelling days, for which I wrote few words but for which the pictures can say far more than words ever could.
Breakfast then off to Highway Five towards Haiphong – stopped in Tongs [Hải Dương?] Province for tea and green bean cake – then on to Haiphong for lunch and then looked at communal house (Hang Kenh) and on to Hạ Long Bay via ferries etc.
Haiphong (above) Communal House (below)We got on the above ferry after photographing it, but missed the one belowArrived in Hạ Long at dusk
Stayed in Hạ Long West – took the ferry to Hạ Long East for a walk before dinner and early night
Rose very early – flew [from] Chiang Mai to Bangkok then on to Hanoi – arrived 1215. Fought through bureaucracy – got taken to hotel– Changed/freshened up…
Quite a fight it was too, on arrival at Hanoi. I cannot remember all the details of it, but it was to do with filling in a form upon which you declare the address where you are going to stay.
Given that we were to be staying at several places in the space of a week and I had the local tour agent, Vidotour’s, address, I presented the form with that. Not good enough. If we were staying at several addresses I needed to list several addresses.
So I tried to write several addresses on a tiny form. The official claimed he couldn’t read my handwriting. “Do you know who I am?”, I felt like saying, but didn’t. He was quite cross and suggested that I had deliberately written illegibly.
So he called a more senior official, who suggested that the name and address of our local tour agent, Vidotour, would do. Good idea, Sir.
Welcome to Hanoi, Sir, have a nice cup of tea (Indochine Restaurant, later that day)
I should add at this point that we had a marvellous time in Vietnam; that hoo-ha on arrival was the only inhospitable moment during our stay.
