Dragons and Chickens

08122016

Asia, Cruise, Vietnam

We woke up when we wanted, as our activity for the day did not depart until after noon. We had a continental breakfast delivered to our room at the last possible minute. For “free” food delivered to our room it was pretty alright, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, toast. We have also gotten in the habit of ordering a pitcher of ice water whenever we have anything brought to our cabin, cause water is good for you.

we then wandered around the boat a little more, finally making our way to the main lounge gathering point for our activity of the day.

We were assigned our sub-vessel for the tour of Halong Bay.

The boat that was to take us through the rock formations was a “chinese junk” which as i understand is a shallow boat ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship) ). And on the boat they had a full kitchen to feed tourists local sea food.

The spread was pretty great, there was doughy-fried-calamari balls, very much like the Takoyakis of Japan, buttered shrimps, some kind of light seafood wontons like things, a battered fish and veggie plate, a full steamed fish, and watermelon to finish it off. All of it was very good, our junk was not full, of the 8 tables on the boat, each of them were at least 1-2 people short, and one table was made up of a family of four with 2 children under 4 yrs (so they werent eating much). This meant there was plenty of food to go around, I actually didnt even make it to the latter parts of the meal, as i was full of squid balls and battered fish.

The boat then took us around the rock formations, including the so called kissing chickens, pictured below, ill let you imagine whichever you want to be said kissing chickens

these were beautiful, very similar to the little islands we snorkled around in Brazil. Considering how close we got to some of them, I imagine they are relatively straight/sharp outcroppings of rock coming from the sea floor. There is a legend as to how they came to be

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hạ_Long_Bay

The whole area is a UNESCO heritage site, because it is beautiful, natural, and a significant part of the history/culture of the Vietnamese people.

The boat then took us to one of the grottos in one of these rocky islands.

There were a number of steps getting up there, certainly nothing Laura and I would bat an eye at, but the cruise given the demographics, had to emphasize (i dont know if i mentioned this, but so far, laura and I have seen maybe 2 other couples that are our age, i think we are one or two standard deviations away from the mean age on board).

Everyone on our Junk made it up and through all the steps

as you can see the Vietnamese government has put work in to make the place more attractive, personally i think it detracts from the experience, they laid in lighting and water features, and concreted in a path to keep tourists on.

I think it would have been cooler if the path was just ropes held to the wall by eye-bolts and maybe some rope LED lighting.

The more fun part of the excursion was probably chatting up the other cruise goers. We sat next to an older couple from New York/New Jersey, the wife (though Laura doesnt think they are married) being nearly deaf lent an extra layer to the conversations, and another recently retired gentleman that has been on various other cruises and done all kinds of adveture sports, including paddling through the entire Missouri River, and climbing some of the more dangerous canyons in Utah.

We also met 2 retired gay couples. These guys seemed like alot of fun, they learning this was our belated honeymoon, they provided unsolicited relationship advice, but considering between the two couples they have over 75 years of (only one each) marriage, i figure their advice is sound.

When we got back to the boat we elected to go to the Dining Hall for dinner.

It was muuuch better than the top deck buffet, we will be eating there at every opportunity from now on.

We have open seating, and ent up seated next to Brian. Brian is a character, he has been on over 130 cruises, he has basically been cruising for the last 10 years. He lives out of a less than 7kg backpack so he can hop any flight easily (we unfortunately both have 15kg backpacks and as you recall were forced to check them at one point). He had all kinds of advice for us on how to cruise, and was full of insight. he knows crewmembers on various Holland America Cruises, as well as other lines, hes got friends all over the world too, so when he is at port he has a place to stay and a local guide.

He also believes our plan to sneak into the will of some of the cruises is a totally viable plan. We chatted with him over diner (which was great, i had pine-nut-panko crusted chicken, and laura had the steak) and ent up hanging out for nearly 2 hours listening to his stories.

We certainly look forward to running into him more over the course of our trip.

We then went to one of the bars for another happy hour. Drank jameson and gingers, got to know one of the bar staff and headed for bed.