Viking Cruises

64 | Viking Explorer Society News Asia's road less travelled, the fabled Mekong River flows through Vietnam and Cambodia affording you a unique view of these ancient lands that were once shrouded in mystery. By Viking travellers, Jane and Pete Ward e Magnificent MEKONG A Viking river journey is not just a holiday but an experience to be remembered. A chance to savour different countries and cultures whilst at the same time enjoying the high standards and delights to be found on board a beautiful Viking ship. Knowing this, we were especially excited to be heading for Vietnam and Cambodia on the Magnificent Mekong itinerary. We were met at the airport by our excellent tour guide, Tony. Living in Hanoi all his life he was able to relay all sorts of interesting gems about the area and the people. Viking Saigon was launched in 2022. The ship is spacious, bright, airy, sophisticated and elegant. We were very impressed with our stateroom which had lots of storage space, was tastefully decorated and well equipped. We had booked the pre-holiday extension to Hạ Long Bay. The scenery was quite spectacular. We boarded a vessel for our tour round the bay, and we were served a superb lunch whilst enjoying the incredible sights of the unique rock formations. During our stay at the excellent hotel in Hanoi we enjoyed some varied and very good tours: the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, the Parliament Buildings, Presidential Palace and Literacy Temple. We also enjoyed a very good meal in the evening at a French restaurant in Hanoi. The first night we ventured out on our own and could not believe the number and the speed and manoeuvres of the motorcycles. It really was a culture shock. We went back to the hotel and discovered that there was a roof top bar on the 68th floor. The view from the bar was spectacular. A real highlight was a tour around the Old Town of Hanoi in buggies. This was quite an extensive tour around the bustling and quite fascinating narrow streets. It's quite mind-blowing to see the number of scooters and the amount of people/ belongings/pets they manage to carry around on them. The following day we visited the Ethnology Museum, which was interesting. This was followed by an excellent lunch before we departed to the airport for our flight to Cambodia. As usual, Viking had sorted all our paperwork and passports so all went smoothly. We arrived at our superb hotel in Siem Reap. It was luxurious with a real tropical feel to it.

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