Steve and Cathy's Blog

This is what Cathy and I call a virtual Sea Day, as our new arrival time in Ha Long Bay is now around 6:00pm. We know that the staff of Destination Services has been working overtime trying to rearrange everything for everybody. It is an unenviable job, but we have seen them work miracles before.

We choose to sit in Destination Services to be there when they open up at 9:00am. We are hoping that we can trade our Ha Long Countryside and Zen Buddhism tickets for Junk Cruise Ha Long Bay as we had missed the latter tour scheduled for 3pm today due to our late arrival.

Anna opens up at 8:40, no doubt anticipating a whole lot of traffic to her department. Cathy steps up to ask, and Anna treats her like a friend. A week or so ago, Cathy had submitted a comment card (we are asked to fill out comment cards by the end of each segment) saying that the Destination Services people were wonderful and had the patience of saints. [A couple of days after I had submitted the comment I went to Destination Services and Anna said, “Oh, Mrs. Knight (she pronounces the K) you are the person who said we have the patience of saints! We looked up your picture when we read your comment. You are my favorite passenger. We always get so many complaints, thank you so much for saying something nice.” I said, “You are most welcome, you deserve it. That and some Prozac! “ She laughed.] Within two minutes, we are accommodated.

An additional Junk Cruise has been scheduled for 7:45am tomorrow. Anna switches our Zen Buddhism excursion tickets for Junk Cruise tickets. So we will get to go on the excursion we have been anticipating for months after all. So we sit and watch as guest after guest comes up to discuss their situation. Anna and staff are totally prepared and, actually, most all of the guests exhibit more patience and understanding than we expected.

Another opportunity to write and read and knit and sleep. Sam DeLong has another excellent lecture, this one on photo composition, and Peter Croyle discusses China (Part 1). Steve attends Sam’s and we both listen to Peter on Channel 9.

So we sail into Ha Long Bay around 6:00pm (a picture of what we see is at the beginning of this post). The weather is very hazy, and we are definitely experiencing the cooler temps we have been begging for. We have our fingers crossed that the sun will make a return tomorrow so that we can see this beautiful place in all its glory.