A rough start this morning, as I wake up with a cough, sore throat, and chills. We pack up and head down to the concierge to ask where the closest pharmacy is and head on over to grab some medicine. We pick some up, then get some breakfast at the buffet in the hotel, before storing some of our stuff with the hotel and meet our ride outside, who will be taking us to Lan Ha Bay.
Something to note about going to the coast from Hanoi, it’s a 4 hour drive. Unfortunately for the drive, today is also the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Vietnam, which means traffic is a nightmare, along with an accident which caused the highway lanes to be reduced. This is on top of me fighting off my symptoms and freezing to death in the van. All in all, this drive felt about as long as the flight over to Korea, despite being one third the time.
Finally we make it to the dock we’ll be leaving from, and await the arrival of the other guests, who were also caught up in the traffic. We take a small boat a couple kilometers out until we reach the much larger vessel we’ll be staying the night on. The boat is about 100m with 20 bedrooms, a dining area, small gym, spa, and other rooms and halls.
My first instict upon getting our room key is to immediately crash and lie down on the bed with big blankets, increasing my body temperature like a lizard. We have a large window in front of the beds overlooking the various massive spires of rock and trees, which I watch pass by for a little bit. Aside from lunch, the first actual planned activity doesn’t start for a little bit, so after grabbing a quick bite, I switch techniques for staying warm by having a nice bath, once again looking out at the beautiful geological features.
3:30pm rolls around and I switch to my bathing suit as we hop back into the smaller boats to get closer to the stone pillars, stopping at a floating dock to switch to Kayaks (for those who want some exercise) or bamboo boats that are paddled for you (for those who are lazy). My dad and I hopped into a kayak and start doing some aquatic spelunking. Because of the crazy rock formations in the bay, some of the spires have caves going through them while still being high enough above the water for a kayak to pass through. We go through two cave passes, getting some cool footage as we navigate them, before heading back to the floating dock.
After waiting around for a little bit for the bamboo boats to finish their rounds of the cave, we took the small boat back to the main ship. We were given a refreshing sweet tea when we got back, and had the next scheduled activity at 6:00. I would like to say I spent my time roaming the different activity rooms in the boat until Happy Hour at 6, but I didn’t even do that much, I just lied down until dinner. This did give me time to catchup on my notes, but since we’re on a boat away from mainland, we don’t have wi-fi or signal on the boat, so I can’t upload the previous day’s post.
Dinner service starts, and the large dining room starts to fill up. The dinner is accompanied by a woman playing the Vietnamese Zither, which was very fun to listen to. The food was a little slow coming out, but eventually we finished our dinner and went back to the room to pack it in for the night.
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