Well a two-day cruise around Ha Long Bay was supposed to be the climax of the trip on board the Paradise Luxury. Paradise it certainly wasn’t – apart from anything the weather didn’t help as it was cold and misty. Luxury – well I’m sorry but a dingy cabin in the bowels of the ship, stinking of sewage and having to endure what has to have been the most incompetent Crew & Staff that has ever set sail anywhere. We almost had to storm the galley in order to get fed. I could rant on but suffice it to say that the freshly baked pastries that were advertised for breakfast, may have been freshly baked at some point, but not in this millennium. Everything else was of a similarly disappointing nature. Various excursions around the bay, that is an extraordinary series of limestone “lumps” rising out of the sea, were somewhat limited in their scope though we did get to visit some pretty impressive caves.

Then a quick glimpse of the boat that we should have been on and back to the mainland and a bus ride back to Hanoi.

Oh yes and a floating village that was really a fish farm !!