Three hours East of Hanoi lies Ha Long bay.

It’s one of the five thousand, eight hundred and fifty six places in the world where the tourist guides all insist ‘James Bond was filmed here’.  

As you will see from the photos, it’s an instantly recognisable place. It’s like the leaning tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal or the Billy Bremner statue at Leeds United’s Elland Road ground. (What do you mean you’ve not seen that one? – it was voted Tripadvisor’s No.1 visitor attraction in Gildersome).

Ha Long’s huge bay’s incredible scenery is defined by almost two-thousand towering ‘Karsts’ (limestone islands). It’s name translates as ‘Descending Dragons’ but we’ve not spotted one of those yet, thank goodness.  

However, Ha Long bay is not where we’re going.  

The problem with Ha Long bay is that its fame has led to it being inundated with hundreds of boats and thousands of tourists which leaves no privacy for any self-respecting Bond villain to build his lair.

Instead, our destination was Lan Ha bay,  which means summer orchids so more petals and less fire-breathing, which seems more pleasant. 

Lan Ha adjoins Ha Long near Long Chau (keep up) and is pretty much identical in the scenery department, (both being UNESCO world heritage sites), but it’s much quieter, with just 60 small boats in a 70 square Km area. It’s beauty is unsullied apart from all the evil lairs commissioned by unscrupulous Bond villains, (although, by necessity, they’re very well hidden, otherwise Bond films would end after only 15 minutes rather than the requisite ninety). 

Here we joined a small boat with just ten cabins called the ‘Yling’ where we will spend the next three days cruising and relaxing.

I don’t normally comment about the levels of luxury or otherwise that we may be lucky or unlucky enough to travel in, nor the  quality of the food we eat, unless there’s a really good reason to do so. 

There’s plenty of other food and hotel blogs if that’s your thing. 

In this blog, it’s not relevant whether we stay in a youth hostel or a palace, eat grass in a field or Carpaccio of ostrich retina in Michelin opulence. For it to get a mention in this blog it needs to pass my very stringent ‘slightly interesting’, ‘oddly unusual’ or ‘cringingly weirdly’ testing regime).

We’ve had teriffic experiences in some places around the world and terrible experiences in other places and the relative cost or grandeur is rarely a factor of our opinion.

However, the moment we set foot on this tiny cruise ship we realised how special it is so I do have to mention it.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this particular tour was because of this cruise as I’d heard it was a rare experience but I wasn’t prepared for just how special it is.  

It really is magnificent. Just ten beautiful cabins, each like a colonial diplomat’s residence. The boat gently cruises this magnificent bay with its towering rocks while we take part in activities, receive lectures about the geography, flora and fauna, visit islands and are generally pampered to death.  If you are ever lucky enough to visit this area look it up and try to do it. 

As for the food, which I’ve just said this isn’t about. It’s presented on the most artistically decorated plates I’ve ever seen. 

It seems to have become obligatory for chefs to ‘paint’ the plate simply because that’s what the judges demand in order to win Masterchef on tv plus, of course, they can charge more as jus is obviously more expensive to mine than gravy.

You can’t just slap a dollop of mashed potato on the plate nowadays, it has to be a ‘quenelle of pomme de terre au beurre’ presented on a smear of that jus or upon swirls of sauce or spherical fish pearls to ‘elevate’ the dish or some other nonsensical made-up cullinery term. It’s like how everything is now ‘curated’ for you, though I still don’t know what that means.

However, it’s not the actual food that caught my eye, it’s the plates that it’s served on.

It wasn’t until meal three on board that we realised that the beautiful plates on which the food was being served were not beautiful plates. The patterns, which we thought were part of the ceramic, were not actually painted and fired in the glaze, but individually hand ’painted’ with edible sauces. (I sat scraping the plate with my knife and chopsticks and tasting it under Brigitte’s exasperated gaze for some time to verify this for you).

Take a look at the photos, it must take longer to paint the plates than make the food. 

In the afternoon we hopped aboard the tender and sailed to Cat Ba, the large island in the bay with 10,000 inhabitants and home to the endangered Cat Ban Langur monkey.

We then went on a bicycle tour (yes Jonny, I cycled!). I rejected the first two bikes as the brakes didn’t work, before settling on my speed machine.

Everyone then set off – except for me – as my saddle promptly collapsed and I ended up looking like one of those circus clowns, riding the tiny bike with my bum somewhere near the pedals and my knees around my ears!

Another bike later and a big gap to make up but I heroically overtook the stragglers in my race to the front.

I must be honest, I’m not a cyclist, never have been, I think my legs are faulty, and it turned out that there was an insurmountable obstacle on the return journey which I think the Vietnamese guide called ‘the slight incline’ so I returned by car.

Brigitte, however, impressively cycled the whole journey which proves that her daily gym routine works. 

Day 2 

So excited! Up early because last night Sam (our cruise curator🤣) said that we were having an early morning Chai Tea experience on the deck. What a great idea, utilising the exercise area for a traditional morning tea ceremony I thought.

Imagine my shock to find the eighteen guests all bright alert and doing some kind of bizarre twisting martial art exercise.

It wasn’t Chai tea – It was Tai Chi! 

Ridiculous! I’m marking this cruise down on Trip advisor right now. 

As we left the deck he said something about tomorrow morning doing yoghurt so presumably we’ll get to sample some local yaks milk delicacy. That sounds better.

The big upside about this boat for me is that there’s hardly any connectivity. No pinging, dinging, ticking, tocking, insta-ing, emailing or whatsapping, which is so nice and relaxing. We can just reflect, take in the ethereal beauty and be in the moment.

Brigitte, on the other hand, feels she is in the Betty Ford clinic and has gone cold turkey. She is starting to shake uncontrollably as it’s entirely possible that a grandchild’s shoelace will became unfastened today without her knowing about it and watching it unfold on video🤣

You may or may not get this blog as I’m just going to leave my phone and if it connects it connects. If not, then it might be mañana by the time you read this, and it’s possible we are already on our way south.

Strange things……

Ooh, Fruit quiz.

No one got the correct answer today. I may start deducting points for incorrect answers – Lynn & Anita, pull your socks up! It was obviously a Betal fruit which has medicinal properties as an aid to breathing, weight loss and is used like a chewing gum.

No fruit quiz today, please try not to be too disappointed but our Kayaks await.

Hopefully at some point this will connect and be sent.

Afloat – Somewhere in La Han Bay

15th November 2024

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