Vietnam – January 8th, 2016
Overnight Ha Long Bay, sleep still escapes me its 3 am wide awake, looking out our windows Halong Bay is surrounded by Fog, the peaks look sinister and menacing. Tai chi on the deck in the morning…….not too cold and windy.
After a light breakfast, we visited Sung Sot Cave is one of the largest and most beautiful caves in Halong Bay it was discovered by the French in 1901 but used by the local sea people as a shelter for storms for centuries before their discovery, how French to take the credit.
By the way, there are 7oo plus steps of steep of up and down the trail, some of them steep some fairly flat – the cave is divided into 3 chambers, each with its own unique features of stalagmites and stalactites – if you look around the caverns all kind of shapes appears before your eyes, you just need to let your imagination wander, except for a very phallic symbol, no imagination needed.
Back to the boat, settled our bar bill – for those that contributed to David’s vacation cocktail fund, his bar. bill came to 588,000 Vietnamese Dong living the high life – nice brunch as we sailed back to the marina to continue our trip back to the airport before an early evening flight to Saigon.
An observation about Vietnam traffic they have rules but most people ignore them although they seem to partially respect traffic lights but are on the move before the light actually changes. People drive on a two-lane highway right down the middle not moving over to let others pass, car, trucks, and buses make very erratic lane changes by driving into oncoming traffic, so it’s a guess as to whom it’s going to pull over, their fingers have probably developed atrophy for its constantly pressing on the horn, add the pollution, congestion and in top of it all 1000 horns all our synch it makes for a painful noisy road or city trip.
In our drivers defense they were all very conscientious of westerners driving like.
Having time in our hand our guide gave us the option to tour another beautiful temple high in the mountains surrounded by pine trees, they were having a festival on the grounds and 100’s of school kids walking around, being the only westerners there, we got a lot of hellos – I was approached by a group of students, they probably had just seen DESPICABLE me and thought I was Mr. Gru, so see my pictures with my minions, lots of smiles and phones out for pictures.
Long wait for our flight to Saigon and airport food was dismal, think back to us airport food in the 80’s.
Arrived in Saigon, the city has grown since my last visit – our hotel Renaissance River Front by Marriott is right on the river, two-room suite on the 20th floor overlooking the river and city includes two bathroom – I love staying with uncle Marriott.
Tomorrow we board our ship for the next 7 nights up the Mekong Ricer ending up in Siemens Reap, Cambodia.
One country down two more to go.
