We wrapped up our Vietnam visit by treating ourselves to a memorable 3 day/2 night cruise on Halong Bay and its surrounding area. Although our initial itinerary allocated only just two weeks in Vietnam, we were glad we took the opportunity to extend our stay by almost two extra weeks to include places like Pho Quoc island, Mekong delta (Can Tho), Danang and Tam Coc. Our introduction to Vietnam though atrocious with four night stay in Ho Chi Ming City was difficult but thankfully we learned to enjoy more of Vietnam’s offering along the way. Although we had read a lot about the dreadful Burning Season in the northern part of South East Asia, we hoped the yearly event would have come to an end by the time we got in the region. It was not the case.

2023.03.27 – Hanoi – Halong Bay (Vietnam)

We had an early breakfast in order to be ready for our Halong Bay cruise hotel pick-up scheduled between 8:00am – 8:30am. We started to be nervous when the clock reached 8:40am and we were still waiting in the hotel lobby. Thankfully a few minutes later, we boarded a bus with a bunch of other guests. Binh introduced himself as our guide for the duration of our cruise. He kept us entertained along the way with tidbits about various topics related to Vietnam (marriage custom, alphabet, practical sentences, etc). The ride from Hanoi to the Halong Bay pier took 3.5hrs. The sky was quite cloudy and the temperature was in the low 20C. Near the end of our road journey, the bus stopped at a pearl processing and selling factory. At the pier, we boarded a small 40-passenger transfer boat for a 40 mins ride to our main cruise ship anchored somewhere in Halong Bay. As we boarded our cruise ship, we were offered a welcome drink and given our room key. Jenny and I, who had never taken a formal cruise before, were ecstatic about our large modern room and its view on the sea. We had our first meal which established a very high standard for our meals. Later, we were invited to participate in the first activity of the cruise: a 2 hr kayak outing. We boarded once again our transport boat which brought us to a floating restaurant where we took place into 2-person kayaks. Paddling the kayaks provided a great means of having a close-up of limestone mounds for which Halong Bay was famous for. Towards the end of our kayak outing, a number of guests slipped out from their kayak and into the water of a lagoon for a refreshing swim. Jenny preferred to stay dry. Back on the cruise ship and after a well deserved shower, we were invited to participate in a brief cooking class which focused on preparing Vietnamese spring rolls. It was a fun and tasty activity as we ate all the spring rolls we made. Later Binh briefed us on tomorrow’s agenda. At that time, we learned that only 8 of 29 guests onboard had enrolled on the 3d/2n cruise while the others had opted for the 2d/1n option. In the evening, we had an amazing BBQ buffet for dinner including some delicious clams, oysters and other seafood. Slipping into bed while being almost at eye level with the sea was pretty magical.

2023.03.28 – Halong Bay – Halong Bay (Vietnam)

Although our stomachs were still full from our previous evening’s dinner, we were still treated to a nice breakfast buffet. As we boarded a transport boat to go for a 3hr trek at a nearby national park on Cat Ba island – the largest island of Halong Bay, another transport boat arrived with guests enrolled on the 2d/1n cruise who had just completed a bicycle outing. At the Cat Ba pier, a mini van picked us up and brought us to visit the very elaborate Trung Trang cave before moving on to the start of our trekking trail leading to the Dinh Ngu summit. Although the trail we followed was well established, a short portion of it proved to be quite steep and rocky. Sadly the views from atop were obstructed because of the clouds. After wrapping up our trek, the mini van brought us in town for a hot pot lunch at a restaurant. Later, we visited a local beach for less than an hour as the weather (and the music) did not lend itself to any relaxing time. On the way back to our cruise ship, our transport boat stopped in front of a climb so we could get a glimpse of some white-headed langurs. These monkeys are considered critically endangered with an estimated population of no more than 600 individuals. Binh, our guide, was almost as excited as us as he had not seen any langurs for over one year. Later, we traveled through a fisherman village before returning to our cruise ship. When we disembarked, we noticed a new group of guests had been brought onboard with their own guide. After a warm shower and some relaxing time in our room, we had another delicious dinner along with the other 6 guests on the 3d/2n cruise option.

2023.03.29 – Halong Bay – Hanoi (Vietnam)

We had an early breakfast at 6:30am in order to enjoy a bicycle ride in the countryside roads and take in a visit of a traditional village before wrapping up our cruise itinerary. We took a transport boat to the Cat Ba island again and as we got off the boat we were quickly provided with bicycles and helmets. Cycling along the peaceful road was quite enjoyable. Binh brought the group cycling on an adventure route – a very narrow cow path – just like we had done plenty of times in the UK last summer. Sadly, Jenny lost control of her bicycle and fell into a muddy ditch on the side of the path because she tried to avoid riding through some water buffalo poop. Binh led us through a very insightful visit of a traditional village before we returned to the boat pier. Along the way, Jenny started to feel ill. Back on our cruise ship, we were given one hour to shower and check-out from our room in order for staff to prepare our room for the next group of guests. Jenny’s illness and aches kept on getting worse. We had one last meal onboard our cruise ship – an early lunch served at 10am (which Jenny skipped). We returned to the mainland with another transport boat. After a 40 minute rides, we boarded our bus for a 3.5 hrs ride to Hanoi. Jenny continued to feel ill throughout our commuting. Our bus dropped us near our hotel and we prompted check-in allowing Jenny to rest and sleep for the remainder of the day. I had some take-away banh mỳ (sandwiches) and latte for dinner.

2023.03.30 – Hanoi – Vientiane (Laos)

Jenny woke up feeling much better in the morning. After a light breakfast, we took a stroll around the nearby lake (Hoàn Kiem) while taking many photos. Along the way, we also visited an interesting church and its grounds. We wrapped up our visit by stopping at a popular coffee shop for a latte and an egg coffee – which Jenny really enjoyed. The coffee shop was known for having its wall and furniture covered with post-it note with personal messages written by guests and staff. Back at our hotel room, we relaxed until check-out. As we had heard that immigration exit processing at the airport was slow, we opted to show up four hours ahead of our 4:30pm flight to Laos. It took us only 45 mins to go through the exit and security formalities. Our 45 mins flight was uneventful but we were impressed by the fact that our flight attendants managed to serve everyone with a box lunch and refreshment in this short time. At the airport, after retrieving our checked luggage, we proceeded to buy a local SIM for $5 USD. We had discovered in Hanoi that the Grab car share service was not operating in Laos but that a local version of the service was available under the name of Loca. As we were not successful at completing our Loca app setup, we ended taking an airport taxi to our hotel for $7 USD – depleting a bit further our USD cash. As we left the airport, we found ourselves in some of the hottest and most humid weather we had encountered on this trip. In the evening, we briefly tried to find a money exchange office around our hotel neighborhood but we did not have any success. We discovered (or rather confirmed) that Laos was very much a cash society. We struggled to find a restaurant that would accept a credit card. We finally had our dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Vientiane – our first ever meal at this popular world-wide restaurant chain. Later, we reluctantly opted to use an ABM to withdraw some local currency. We had to try the ABM from 5 different banks before we finally got some money. Back at our hotel room, we had to content until 11pm with some loud bass music from the night market across the street from our accommodation. Jenny did (again) an amazing job to wash our clothes dirtied during our Halong Bay cruise. Our room balcony proved very useful for drying our clothes.

2023.03.31 – Vientiane – Vientiane (Laos)

In the morning before our breakfast, we started to look at our transport options to reach our next town: Vang Vieng – some 125kms further away. We learned that a new fast train built by a China/Laos cooperation was available for our journey. Sadly purchasing tickets in person or on-line was quite challenging for the typical foreigner. As the train station was quite far from the town center and the ticket office was only opened a few hours a day (while not accepting cash or credit card), we skipped the option of buying our tickets in-person. Buying the tickets on-line presented us also with a number of challenges. The first one was trying to install the application on our phone as we could not download it from the Google Play store nor from the Apple store – both repositories reported that the app was unavailable for our region. We finally managed to find and install the app (e.g. APK file) from an unofficial repository source. The next issue arose when we tried to pay for our train tickets as my credit card transaction got rejected. We initially thought the transaction was being declined due to the fact that the payment was being handled by a China bank which we had not informed our credit card company about any purchases from China. To our distress, we learned that my credit card had been locked in response to a potential fraud alert – it was our 2nd such incident on this trip. We desperately tried to respond to the fraud notification by repeatedly calling different customer service groups of Visa offices but to no avail. Without a case# no one was able/willing to help us resolve the issue. The most frustrating thing was that we had not received any email or voice message notifying us of the case #. Although Jenny had not brought her HomeTrust Visa credit card with her, we managed to use it (thanks to Keepass) for online purchases of our train tickets to Vang Vieng and also pay for our upcoming 2 day/1 night cruise on the Mekong river. In late morning, we walked out of our hotel to seek a money exchange office a few kms away. We opted to change some CDN funds into local Lao Kip. From there, we took our first Loca car ride back to our hotel. We stayed in our room for the remainder of the afternoon. We opted to take a Loca ride to a Chinese restaurant some 5kms away for our diner. While we had our meal, we received a voice message informing us of our fraud alert case#. After diner, we took a Loca back to our hotel area. We briefly visited the night market before returning to our room. Within a few minutes from sitting down in front of our laptop with Zoiper (i.e. VoIp softphone), I had my HomeTrust Visa credit card unlocked through an automated fraud phone service. The night market music hindered Jenny’s sleep as it blared out until 1am.

2023.04.01 – Vientiane – Vang Vieng (Laos)

We checked out late from hotel and took a Loca ride to the remote new railway station – some 18 kms away from town. Along the way, we learned from our English speaking Loca driver that the hazy sky was in fact the result of the Burning Season. We had started to notice this haziness in sky during our stay in Tam Coc. Our driver also remarked that it was one of the worst year ever in Laos for the hazy sky. The China-Laos railway opened fairly recently in Dec. 2021 and operated as a domestic railway until May 2022 when Laos finally opened up to foreign tourists. The station felt like an airport with its over-the-top security screening. We actually got our multi-tool confiscated as it had a blade. We were not happy with this event. We had almost lost this same multi-tool when we had taken our ferry across the English channel last summer on our tandem bicycle trip. Although the humongous station was modern, it currently housed no services whatsoever. The 1h train ride was uneventful. At the Vang Vieng, we discovered that no transport was available through our Loca app, instead we boarded a songtaew (small truck with the back partially enclosed and with benches along the sides) along with other train passengers. We checked-in into hotel and swapped rooms three times until we found one with a reasonable view as we booked. Surprisingly we had dinner at a German-Thai restaurant. Jenny enjoyed her Wiener schnitzel very much. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at one of the most tour operators in town. We signed up for 1/2 day of kayaking and caves exploration for the next morning.

2023.04.02 – Vang Vieng – Vang Vieng (Laos)

Our hotel offered a rather meager breakfast this morning – it did not quite match the “Faboulous breakfast” rating on Booking.com. Our tour operator promptly picked us up at 10am as promised. We had a fun 7kms kayak ride on the Nam Song river as we had to negotiate a number of small rapids. Our guide was impressed with our kayaking skills. We stopped to visit two caves – one of which we explored on a floating tube. We re-embarked on our kayak for another 3kms before finishing our 1/2 day tour. We totally enjoyed the experience even though the kayaking was strenuous on our hips. Back in town, we stopped at a bakery/restaurant for some latte/cappuccino and Pad Thai to replenished ourselves. Once we reached our room, we took a well-deserved shower. Later, Jenny went through her clothes washing chores. In the evening, we had dinner at a busy Thai restaurant nearby.