Jimmy had arranged to have Tai Chi on the ship at 6:30 and a morning Kayak ride at 7:45. We elected for the unmentioned third option of moseying on out to the viewing deck with a cup of coffee around 8:30.
Thank you, Jimmy, but we’re on a slightly different timetable.
The late morning activity was a cooking demonstration by the boat’s chef. After our amazing cooking class in Hoi An, I was skeptical that this one could compete. But it was an entirely different animal. Literally. Wait for it.
The chef brought out an apple and a cucumber, and began to silently whittle away with a paring knife for 5-10 minutes.
None of us had any idea where he was going with that until he started to push up the slices that he had been cutting.
A couple of toothpicks later, he had assembled his creation.
Which, of course, was immediately smashed by the queen of the ship.
Sorry, Jimmy. But you couldn't have expected that to play out any other way.
The demonstration was followed by another decadent meal. Six courses for lunch is a little over the top, but I wasn't complaining.
The ship's purser came around to settle everyone's bar tabs ad we sailed into the harbor. There was a clear melancholy hovering over the ship as we all wondered if there was a three night option for next time.
We took the ship's dinghy back to the dock, and waited in the harbor building for our bus to arrive. We watched the efficiency of a dozen crews cleaning a dozen ships to get ready for a dozen busses carrying tonight's guests. But despite the buzz of the crews--and the bay's well-earned international reputation--the bay never felt overcrowded. Viet Nam (and Unesco) deserve a lot of credit for doing an excellent job managing the flow of visitors.
The open-air harbor building was crazy hot, and the humidity was starting to mess with my brain. For a brief, fleeting second, I stopped dreading our flight home the next day. I still wasn't ready to leave this place, but I wasn't terribly broken up over returning to dry heat and abundant air conditioning.
It didn't help that I was waiting for the bus in the middle of the parking lot. Four hours on a minibus with a macrobaby is no walk in the park, and I wanted to make sure that we had primo seats to make the journey a little easier.
The sacrifice paid off, and the ride home was just as easy as the ride there. At the mid-point, we pulled in to the tourist trap to end all tourist traps. Seriously, there is no way this will ever be topped.
First, it was a literal jobs factory. The first thing you see when you enter is forty people making the crafts on sale throughout the rest of the store.
It was not immediately clear if they were artisans or forced laborers.
Not an artisan? That's ok, hang out with your friends in the clothing section.
There was an unbelievable array of goods on sale at this place. All I could do was incredulously run around the store and snap photos. This was no ordinary truck stop.
Need some fine jewelry?
Imported liquor?
Paintings?
Jade something-or-others?
A $9,000(!) ceramic vase? Or a porcelain mannequin wearing an au dai? I'm sure they'd sell you that, too.
Regular leather not good enough for you? How about ostrich, crocodile, python, or stingray leather? And I'm not sure how making a wallet out of a stingray is even possible, let alone legal.
I've never considered Pringles a luxury item. But sure, whatever.
This was all just too much for Mimi.
At first, I imagined that the party official who oversees tourism sales must see all Westerners as bottomless pits of money and bad taste. But after processing it all and talking to some tour guides, I realized that it wasn't for us. It was for the Chinese. Their country is going through the same middle class boom that our's did in the 1950s when we first started traveling the world en masse.
They're the new group of people rolling through a foreign city in a huge bus, stopping for an hour, and dropping significant amounts of cash. Locals simultaneously roll their eyes and count their money. And like us in 1950, the Chinese can't get European wine, African diamonds, or American Pringles (sigh) back home. So they compliment their Vietnamese group tour with a few foreign luxuries to show their friends when they return. It's easy to judge that kind of gaudy, cookie cutter tourism, but there are about a thousand French cafe owners who will tell you that we're not much better.
After about 30 minutes, the bus picked us up on the other side of the store (like cattle through a slaughterhouse), and we headed home. Jimmy continued to charm us with bad puns and interesting anecdotes, and Mimi spared us from another minibus diaper change.
That night, we took Jimmy's advice and went out the Hanoi night market. Just like the name implies, it was three blocks of street vendors selling everything from t-shirts to night lights. The crowd was equal parts locals and tourists, and the whole experience was unquestionably Vietnamese.
But good God, it was hot. Still. At 8pm. So Aimee and I used Mimi as an excellent excuse to take a 3/4 mile cab ride back to our air conditioned hotel.
Paradise can be so hard sometimes.
