mahdnc

There have been several ship-wide announcements that Solstice has paused disembarkation due to "Hong Kong immigration and inspection flow in the terminal". I would estimate that things have been stopped for over 30 minutes now. We were assigned disembarkation group #29. because we have no flights to catch today as we will be staying in Hong Kong for 5 nights. So we wait patiently sitting comfortably in the lounge in front of Murano.

We are currently on Solstice (ready to disembark this morning here in Hong Kong). I did ask our Blu sommelier about Grgich Hills and he confirmed that Solstice had their Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Fume' Blanc in inventory. We ended up ordering a bottle of the Fume'.

@steve3008 @Blazerboy I checked with our Blu Sommelier, Teo. He confirmed that Solstice still has Grgich Hills in their inventory. They had Grgich's Cabernet, Chardonnay, and Fume' Blanc. We ordered a bottle of the Fume' ($65 including Captains Club discount and gratuity). I also asked Teo about Caymus as Constellation did not actually have it during our Oct 2022 Transatlantic despite it being on their wine list. They had 5 bottles of the Cabernet Sauvignon left, so we ordered one ($135 USD less 20% Captains Club discount + 18% gratuity). That is the Solstice wine report,

This is our awesome stateroom attendant, Darkham, from Indonesia . Darkham has been with Celebrity for over 20 years. His first ship was Zenith and he has worked many other Celebrity ships including Mercury, Infinity, Summit, and Constellation. He has yet to work on any Edge Class ships because he doesn't like the IV cabins (I am just kidding about the reason, but he has not worked Edge class yet). Darkham is assigned to "only" 10 cabins because his responsibilities include the suites such as PS and RS. His contact card in our cabin has "Retreat Host" printed on it. Darkham did an excellent job for us. He was extremely competent and non-obtrusive. We said our goodbyes as we left our cabin for the last time on this sailing. We will miss him.

We docked at Hong Kong on schedule at 6 am this morning (local Hong Kong time). I woke up at 5 am to watch the sail in from our balcony.

It’s hard for me to make an apples to apples comparison with food and dining service on this sailing because this is our first cruise dining at Blu. However I found that I didn’t like the menu that much although the service was good. I ordered at least one course from the MDR menu during the six dinners we had there (we ate twice away from the ship and four times at the specialty restaurants). We ate several breakfast and lunches at ther Oceanview Cafe and MDR and I was fine with the food and service. We ate at Murano and Tuscan Grill twice each and service and food were top notch. We skipped Le Petite Chef on this cruise.

During the time Solstice spent in Vietnam, there were several Vietnam immigration officers onboard. My wife talked to one of them during an elevator ride. She said that he spoke very good English. He mentioned that when the ship is docked, they are allowed to eat at the Oceanview Cafe (photo) otherwise when the ship is sailing, they eat with the crew. During our first stop at Vietnam (Phu My), our Passenger Landing card (photo) is stamped by a Vietnamese immigration officer onboard. It is to be inspected by every time we get off the ship thereafter, but that was very hit and miss.

We’re got our passports back this morning after having surrendered them during embarkation. We were given this schedule last night in our stateroom (link to the full flyer): We happen to be on our way to a late breakfast and found our station open with no line at 9:45 am. After finishing breakfast and walked by, there still was no line. Today’s passport retrieval process was very convenient and much better than what we went through the last time we gave up our passports aboard Infinity in Christmas 2016 (South America). When you get your passport, you are also given a Hong Kong immigration form along with instructions (linklink ) for each person in your stateroom. Before putting away my passport i took a look at it and saw that it bore Thailand and Vietnam stamps.

The ship’s clock moved an hour forward last night and so we have up there extra hour that we gained from the first night of the cruise. So we are having a late breakfast at the Oceanview Cafe. Even though it was pretty busy when we got there, we found a nice clean table in the outdoor area under the shade. Life is good! The current view from our table: We are sailing under partly cloudy skies and very smooth seas. The captain is not pushing Solstice’s screws very hard as there is barely a wake behind us. Looks like we are on the proverbial “slow boat” to Hong Kong. As we sail, we are accompanied by two freighters on our port side. Funny how ugly freighters look so nice from a cruise ship…

Perhaps it is. I just didn’t expect it, that’s all. Also the service was buffet style and so the dining seating arrangement made it a little bit difficult to negotiate. But no one left the dining room hungry! As for the ship and cabin, it was very nice and up to Celebrity standards. Our Vietnamese guide who led our shore excursion was excellent and extremely charming. I was impressed with her.

Some more photos of the Paradise Grand: Nothing is perfect and therefore there were a couple of things that I didn't like about the cruise (besides the high price that Celebrity charged that I couldn't do anything about). The first one was the dining room seating arrangement. Most of the seating was done in a very long row of tables. There were a couple of 2 tops in an adjacent room (bar lounge) and several booths for 6-8 people that seemed to be reserved for families). The other thing that I didn't like was that you had to pay for water in the dining room ($2 USD for a glass bottle of water that would fill two glasses). Alcohol prices were reasonable however. There was a special menu for New Year's Eve. Lobster thermidor was served to everyone and there was a meat station (below) you could go to as well (most of the meats were behind the chef and not visible in the photo below.

Here are some photos of our balcony cabin aboard the Paradise Grand during our Halong Bay overnight excursion:

Besides cruising around Halong Bay (which was cool), we were offered an opportunity to either kayak or ride in a rowed boat. My wife wanted us to ride the boat and not kayak (something about me not being a good kayaker). With kayak or boat, you could go through some of the tunnels under the limestone formations: While on the water, we had an opportunity to watch some wild monkeys jumping from tree to tree:

This morning we woke up to a magnificent sunrise at Halong Bay--a view from our balcony:

Some more information about the overnight tour that I hope will be useful: The tour is expensive. When I originally booked the tour for my wife and I, it cost $1,508 that included a modest pre-cruise discount (5%? maybe 10%?). Nevertheless, the tour sold out very quickly. During the Memorial Day 2023 sale, this tour had a large price reduction (despite its still sold out status) and I was able to cancel and rebook it through my cruise planner for $1,154 without losing my spots. Now that I know who Celebrity uses for this overnight cruise, I was able to do a mock booking (direct on their website) for the Paradise Grand for a Sun-Mon trip in January and also one in April. The highest price that I got was $344.13 total for the same cabin we had!! Although it doesn't change the analysis, I do want to point out that booking through Celebrity includes ground transport to the Paradise pier and it is largely refundable whereas all fares booked through the Paradise website were immediately non-refundable. My advice is to try to book this excursion independently through any one of the many companies that do this overnight cruise before booking through Celebrity. As I mentioned, I tried to do that, but Celebrity altered their arrival time to Halong Bay which made it impossible for me.

Here is a video that I took from our port side balcony on Solstice as she sailed past the limestone formations on her way to docking at the Halong Bay pier yesterday morning: link Here are two time lapse videos that I took from our cabin balcony on Paradise Grand during the evening as she was making her way through Halong Bay to her anchorage point for New Year's Eve evening: Video1 and Video2

Here is a quick summary of the overnight tour that we took. There were a 37 Solstice passengers on this excursion (overnight Halong Bay). There were about 20 other passengers not from Solstice. Among them was an Indian family who was doing a land vacation in Vietnam. The excursion is run by a large company called Paradise Vietnam. They run seven boats out to Halong Bay. Our excursion was assigned to Paradise Grand. Paradise Grand has 39 cabins--all located on Decks 1 and 2. All 39 cabins are balcony cabins and appear to be built for double occupancy. My wife and I were assigned Cabin 111. It was pretty nice. The size of the cabin and the balcony as well as the cabin furnishings were on par with a Celebrity ship. Nice king size bed, large closet with safe, and a bathroom with shower (no tub judging from their advertisements, some cabins may have had tubs). The balcony doors are hinged and are not the sliding glass doors. Every passenger I talked to was happy with their cabin. There are four cabins at each corner of Deck 2 which appear to be the best as they had very nice balconies. Smoking is allowed on the balconies as there were all supplied by ash trays. The people in the balcony forward of us smoked quite a bit out there. Getting to the Paradise Grand involved a 20 minute drive by Celebrity bus to their Tuan Chau pier. From their we boarded a 198 passenger speed boat ferry that took us to the Paradise Grand which was anchored deeper into Halong Bay amongst the limestone formations. That ride was about 20 minutes as well.

I would like to wish everyone on this board a very Happy New Year. May your cruises be many and your cancellations few! Things are winding down here at Halong Bay. Most of the boats here are finally quiet. Time for bed!

We had a nice day cruising Halong Bay and visiting the fishing village. Watching the limestone formations as evening fell was pretty magical. We are anchored at Halong Bay for the night--along with several other ships. I am looking forward to seeing it at dawn--the first day of 2024. In the mean time we will be ringing in the year in an hour......

Here is a detailed schedule of events for our Halong Bay overnight tour: link For those interested in taking it, you will find it informative.

We are going on an overnight Halong Bay cruise through Celebrity. Solstice’s arrival time today and departure time tomorrow did not allow me to book it independently. So Celebrity won. The big drawback with this excursion is that we will miss the NYE celebration back on the ship tonight. It is an event that Celebrity does very well. So we essentially paid lots of money to miss this. But this is fabled Halong Bay! And we’ve done NYE three times on a Celebrity ship including Solstice. There are 38 Solstice passengers in total who made this decision and will be on this overnight tour.

Here was Solstice when we boarded last night.

My favorite store in Hoi-An was a silk shop. On the first floor there were several women who were doing stunning embroidery. The finished pieces--some take up to 3 months done by a single craftsman--resembled photographs. No photos were allowed. Too bad. However you could buy the embroidery at the store. Up on the second floor where photos were permitted was a live demonstration that included exhibits of live silk worms (first photo), their cocoons, and a reeling machine that drew the silk from a cocoon in one single strand (second photo). We were told that a single cocoon would yield 500 meters of silk! Apparently the silk comes in two natural colors depending on the silk worm--white and yellow. The second floor had silk clothing that could be purchased. My wife purchased a few scarfs.

Here is another photo from the bustling street market in Old Town Hoi-An:

Nice. On another subject, I will have to check out your recipe contribution,....