After yesterday, it was great to have a bit of a lie in however we timed breakfast in the buffet completely wrong. We forgot to take into consideration that most old people are early risers and it was heaving when we arrived at 8:15. We thought that being as we weren’t arriving at Halong Bay until midday it would be nice and quiet. How wrong were we.
The weather for our sail in through the islands was very overcast and murky with the temperature much cooler at 9°C. I’m sure this place looks totally different when the sun is shining but such is life, it was what it was.
We pulled alongside at 11:30 and next to us was the former Viking Sun (now sailing under her new name of Zhao Shang Yi Dun). She departed almost as soon as we arrived and there didn’t appear to be any passengers onboard and I couldn’t find any details about any current itinerary so a bit of a puzzle.
After a quick lunch we decided to walk to the end of the pier to explore, the walk took around 20 minutes to get to the cruise terminal building where we were greeted by you guessed it, a throng of ever eager taxi drivers all wanting to take us downtown.
Being as all we wanted to do was walk we walked through the building and encountered more of the same on the other side. We had spotted a cable car that passes from one side of Cua Luc harbor and Bai Chay Bridge to the other side. But it only seemed to operate every 30 minutes so we decided to give it a miss. The only other things in the locality of the cruise terminal were loads of sea food restaurants with the live tanks out front. So because my heel was starting to hurt we headed back to the ship. We are doing a full day bay cruise tomorrow so it was just a case of filling time today.
Sunset was around 5:30 and in the dark the panorama looked completely different, the big Ferris wheel taking centre stage. We have an 8:00 rendezvous time in the cruise terminal so it’s not going to be a late one tonight.
Hope you have better weather tomorrow. And that you get to see some of the caves on the islands. They are amazing. The area near the pier has really changed since we were there in 2014.
It certainly has Jim. Looking at google map its a whole different location. We departed from Đảo Tuần Châu.
Hopefully you will have a better day tomorrow on your cruise around the Bay. So much to pack in. I loved the place on my first visit and returned to take an overnight cruise on a 32 cabin purpose built Vietnamese boat … https://solentrichardscruiseblog.com/2014/12/09/a-far-eastern-trilogy-part-1-halong-bay/
The weather wasn’t the best but at least it was dry for us.
be careful with the gout. I was told by my doc that it makes it worse by walking, it spreads the crystals!! have fun x