For anyone left reading this blog, my apologies. It's been a busy time on board and the blog has taken a back seat. Internet access has been a bit sporadic and the ports have been busy.
Vietnam was an example of a port where unless you are on an organised tour then the exposure to the country is limited. The port itself was less than inspiring. We arrived to an industrial setting predominantly used for coal handling. We were greeted by a mountain of coal dust, with the wind whipping up it became apparent that the slight irritation to my eyes was due to this source of local income.
It's not unusual for ships to dock in industrial areas and then convey guests to the more cultural attractions. Livorno, Italy takes you to Florence and Pisa. Civitavechia to Rome. In this case, Chan May to Da Nang. By the time we get our guests on their way to whichever epicenter they have paid for, we often have to resign ourselves to local attractions. In this case, it was a local market only about 200 yards from the ship.
With the guests ashore via the fleet of buses, I headed ashore to peruse the local wares.
To be fair, this was a fun experience. Em and I headed over with a grand total of fifty US dollars to see where this would take us.
A genuine fake Under Armour running top, a parchment picture (which very much reminds me of something my mum owns), two t-shirts and a set of four bowls and spoons later (pictured above) left some pocket shrapnel. The quantity of genuine fake goods was staggering. It's clearly easier to print a size label then actually buy different sized clothing. My first t-shirt was a tad snug (XL), so I headed back ashore to swap it out hoping that Vietnam has a returns policy. It did!! I returned with a replacement in a more suitable size (XXL) only to find it was just as snug. Oh well, I'll consider it as encouragement to lose a bit of weight as that's probably easier than trying to get a larger size.
All joking aside, we had a bit of fun, we spent some money and we got some merchandise of questionable origin and quality. Welcome to Vietnam!!!
It was a very brief but fun call into Vietnam, definitely not what I may have chosen for myself but let's not forget, I'm here getting paid to be here
Some you win, some you lose
And we left with everything we came with, unlike one of our sister brands, who as the photo above shows didn't!
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