The bay consists of a dense cluster of over 3,000 limestone monolithic islands (although locals claim there are only 1,969 as this is the year of Ho Chi Minh's death), each topped with thick jungle vegetation, rising spectacularly from the ocean. Several of the islands are hollow, with enormous caves. Hang Dau Go (Wooden stakes cave) is the largest grotto in the Ha Long area. French tourists visited in the late 19th century, and named the cave Grotte des Merveilles. Its three large chambers contain large numerous stalactites and stalagmites (as well as 19th century French graffiti). There are two bigger islands, Tuan Chau and Cat Ba, that have permanent inhabitants. Both of them have tourist facilities including hotels and beaches. There are a number of beautiful beaches on the smaller islands. Some of the islands support floating villages of fishermen, who ply the shallow waters for 200 species of fish and 450 different kinds of mollusks. Many of the islands have acquired their names as a result of interpretation of their unusual shapes. Such names include Voi Islet (elephant), Ga Choi Islet (fighting cock), and Mai Nha Islet (roof). 989 of the islands have been given names. Birds and animals including bantams, antelopes, monkeys, and lizards also live on some of the islands. Almost all these islands are as individual towers in a classic fenglin landscape with heights from 50m to 100m, and height/width ratios of up to about six. Another specific feature of Halong Bay is the abundance of lakes inside the limestone islands. For example, Dau Be island has six enclosed lakes. All these island lakes occupy drowned dolines within fengcong karst. Halong Bay Cruise deals, last minute Halong Bay cruises, Halong Bay cruise vacation packages and Vietnam cruise destinations from Halong Boat Cruise . Book a Halong Bay Cruise today

BANGKOK – Charming a fuming Elizabeth Taylor, personally snipping a British duke"s hair or catering to the refined palates of Cambodia"s murderous Khmer Rouge leaders.

BANGKOK – Charming a fuming Elizabeth Taylor, personally snipping a British duke"s hair or catering to the refined palates of Cambodia"s murderous Khmer Rouge leaders.

It was all in a day"s work for Kurt Wachtveitl, as he looks back on 41 years running one of the world"s fabled hotels, not with nostalgic tears but plenty of juicy tales and trenchant thoughts about how Bangkok"s Oriental Hotel got to be so good.

A legend himself among the international hotel fraternity, the 72-year-old Wachtveitl retires this month, having amassed awards for the five-star hotel along the Chao Phraya River as well as an endless roster of famous and rich, albeit not always agreeable, guests.

"She treated me like a dog. You remember guests who are really terrible," says the suave German-born hotelier, recalling how Hollywood superstar Taylor blew up because the hotel"s best room, the Oriental Suite, happened to be booked when she checked in.

The two had met before, when he worked at a hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, where actor Richard Burton would meet Taylor for trysts.

"Usually they drank vodka by the bottle. Burton at 3 o"clock in the morning would fall down the staircase dreadfully drunk, crawling through the lobby," says Wachtveitl. Taylor would moan "Richard, Richard" as he drove off to his wife and Wachtveitl was left with helping the star to her room.

Back at the Oriental, the silver-haired Wachtveitl (pronounced Wacht-why-tell) managed to calm the actress down — and she even became an ally in 1993 when one of her best pals, rock star Michael Jackson, was holed up in the hotel and refused to give a concert to which thousands had already bought tickets. Taylor flew from California and persuaded Jacko, who had just been hit with child sex abuse allegations, to perform.

"Celebrities are all easy to deal with if you do everything they want," mused Wachtveitl recently. "If something goes against them, hell will break loose."

Established in 1876 by two Danish sea captains, the Oriental"s A-list crowd in the early days included Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling. They lived in what is now the colonial-style Author"s Wing, the original part of the hotel above which towers the 10-story River Wing, completed in 1976.

The likes of Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, Sean Connery, George W. Bush, David Beckham and Elton John were pampered and placated during the Wachtveitl years, which began in 1967 when he took over the Oriental after hotel school in Switzerland — where he fell in love with his Thai wife-to-be — and stints at several European hotels.

Given a free hand by the local owners, the eager 30-year-old transformed the hotel — which then had atmosphere and decay in equal parts — into what the New York-based Institutional Investor voted as the world"s best hotel for 10 years running. His formula for success: a rigorous focus on his guests and staff.

The Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, as it is now formally known, maintains a database of some 40,000 guests — listing their minutest preferences, pet peeves and sometimes how their stays didn"t go quite right. One senior executive was recently amazed, Wachtveitl relates, when on arrival he was greeted with an apology for a water problem in his room a decade ago — and upgraded to a suite.

"You win a person like this forever. I guarantee you," he says, noting that repeat guests make up 50 percent of the hotel"s clientele, with a new generation following parents who remembered the Oriental so fondly.

There are some guest requests the hotel can"t manage ("A few are better forgotten," Kurt notes), but when the Duke of Bedford"s wife wanted a less conservative look for her husband and heard that Wachtveitl cut his own hair, he brought out the scissors. He also obliged when Naomi Campbell demanded he personally wake the supermodel up with a morning call.

The staff didn"t skip a beat when Khieu Samphan and other ultra-communist Khmer Rouge leaders, now facing trial for genocide, demanded the very best in food and wine at the hotel"s "Lord Jim" restaurant.

"The staff is the pillar of the Oriental. Without them we are nothing. We became a big family," says Wachtveitl of his 1,150 employees who, as guests frequently attest, have acquired Germanic efficiency without losing their natural Thai warmth.

"The staff considers the Oriental as a lifetime job, as it was in Europe some 100 years ago or in Japan some 40 to 50 years ago," he says. In a Thai industry where staff flit from one hotel to another, the average Oriental employee stays more than 16 years.

Wachtveitl subscribes to the old-fashioned way of doing things, as his successor, who previously ran a hotel in Washington D.C., discovered.

"He can"t believe that I don"t have a computer in my office, or a Blackberry, or whatever it"s called," he says. "The old way is if I want to see an engineer, the pastry chef or a housekeeper I go there, sit down and have a chat. If there is something with a guest you pick up the phone and call them, you don"t send an e-mail."

Wachtveitl says his view of the industry is exactly the reverse of many of today"s executives, especially the Americans who obsess about the bottom line, stress fancy marketing and cut staff at the drop of a GDP point.

"I always looked at business at the Oriental from a service point of view. If we give every client pleasure and we make him happy, he will come back here again, then automatically the bottom line will be OK," he says.

Unfortunately, things are not OK as the veteran takes his last bow.

"Business is very, very bad. And the future looks absolutely bleak. That"s why I just had a couple of glasses of wine," Wachtveitl joked one recent evening.

Thailand"s political upheavals, coupled with the world economic crisis and swine flu fears, have created "the perfect storm." The Oriental hasn"t had a single advance booking for its best sellers, the hotel"s 35 luxury suites.

"When I came to the Oriental we had 10 percent occupancy and when I leave we will probably again have 10 percent occupancy," says Wachtveitl. "But we had a great run in between."

MIAMI – The cruise industry is rebounding, but not for the companies who build the increasingly elaborate ships.

MIAMI – The cruise industry is rebounding, but not for the companies who build the increasingly elaborate ships.

Executives from the major European shipyards say they"re not getting enough orders to keep busy and profitable. Though cruise bookings and prices are up, a flood of new ships is crowding the market, and operators have shown little willingness to buy more ships.

Only one new order was placed in 2009, and only four so far in 2010. That"s down from 21 in 2006, before the economic downturn began in December 2007.

"The cruise ship-building industry has slower reaction time and suffers from deeper distress in comparison with cruise lines," said Corrado Antonini, chairman of the Italian state-owned Fincantieri Cantieri Navali Italiani S.p.A.

If things don"t improve, shipbuilding officials and observers said at an industry conference this week, the yards could lose key skilled workers, suppliers and subcontractors — if they can stay afloat at all. And that means trouble when operators do finally want new ships, with ever-increasing amenities like skating rinks, bowling alleys and climbing walls.

Fincantieri is one of just three companies in the world that dominate the specialty niche of cruise ship-building. Antonini warned that if new orders don"t pick up soon, cruise ships will become more expensive to build and less efficiently made.

"The shipbuilding industry has an intrinsic inflexibility deriving from plant assets and specialized skilled resources, which cannot be simply freezed, moved or fired," Antonini said.

Fincantieri is the only of the three major builders with work on the books past 2012 — and they didn"t have it until Carnival ordered two new ships last month. That"s an uncomfortable prospect in an industry where a single order requires years of labor and planning, plus more than 10,000-gross tons of steel and other material.

The other major builders are privately owned Meyer Werft GmbH, based in Papenburg, Germany, and STX Europe AS, a unit of South Korean conglomerate STX Corp. that operates cruise ship yards in France and Finland.

The head of a European ship brokerage says the builders — which also make other types of ships — have become too dependent on the cruise industry, which offered steadily enticing growth of 7 percent a year. It"s hard for the builders to adapt in downturns, and the trend toward bigger vessels means fewer new ships will be needed, said Jean-Bernard Raoust, president of Barry Rogliano Salles.

A boost for the shipyards could come from the European Union, which is expected to start ordering a fleet of new, environmentally friendly ferries, the builders say. Existing vessels are aging, particularly in Mediterranean areas like Greece and Italy.

Meyer Werft spokesman Peter Hackmann said the company isn"t ready to panic. They"re working on seven big cruise ships for three different clients, plus two gas tankers, he said.

"It would be better if we could have orders for 2013, 2014 — it is not as easy as in former years, but we are quite confident," Hackmann said. "We will have years in former times where we would love to have seven ships on order."

DENVER – Colorado mountain towns whose lodging tax collections have suffered along with the travel industry are trying to make sure homeowners who rent out rooms pay their fare share to the government.

DENVER – Colorado mountain towns whose lodging tax collections have suffered along with the travel industry are trying to make sure homeowners who rent out rooms pay their fare share to the government.

"They are essentially hotels, and they need to be paying taxes like hotels," said Telluride Town Manager Frank Bell.

One of Bell"s employees trolls vacation rental Web sites like and to find private renters violating tax laws or zoning restrictions that bar nightly rentals.

"I think it would be conservative to say there are hundreds of thousands of dollars being missed out in Colorado alone," said Joyce Burford, executive director of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns.

The association"s board of directors recently decided to hire an expert to seek out private renters in resort towns and make sure they are following local licensing and tax rules. The expert also will develop a uniform strategy for towns to track private rentals and enforce local laws.

Telluride is watching about 400 private rental homes. In Steamboat Springs, all but about 30 of 450 private renters as of late last year had begun paying taxes, and about 100 of 600 private rentals counted in Breckenridge were not licensed or paying taxes, The Denver Post reported.

Breckenridge Town Manager Tim Gagen said many of the violators in his town are out-of-state owners who don"t realize they need to be licensed and pay taxes.

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Information from: The Denver Post,

MIAMI – Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. said Friday that it will provide at least $1 million in humanitarian relief in response to the earthquake in Haiti.

MIAMI – Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. said Friday that it will provide at least $1 million in humanitarian relief in response to the earthquake in Haiti.

The cruise operator, which has been a foreign investor in Haiti for nearly 30 years, said it will team with several charitable organizations to provide assistance. The company will also deliver goods and supplies to the country on its vessels.

Royal Caribbean said its Independence of the Seas is bringing supplies such as rice, dried bean, water, canned goods and powdered milk to Labadee, Haiti. Other ships that will be heading to the same port with additional supplies include the Navigator of the Seas, Liberty of the Seas and Celebrity Solstice.

Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake on Tuesday, and the American Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. is one of many businesses that have pledged donations to the Haitian earthquake relief efforts including Kohl"s Corp., Visa Inc. and Comcast Corp.

FRESNO, Calif. – Seemingly suspicious pieces of luggage delayed flights at two airports Tuesday, prompting evacuations in Minneapolis and closing a California airport where authorities discovered what turned out to be soft drink bottles filled with honey.

FRESNO, Calif. – Seemingly suspicious pieces of luggage delayed flights at two airports Tuesday, prompting evacuations in Minneapolis and closing a California airport where authorities discovered what turned out to be soft drink bottles filled with honey.

A passenger"s suitcase tested positive for TNT at Bakersfield"s Meadows Field during a routine swabbing of the bag"s exterior, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. When Transportation Security Administration officials opened the bag, they found bottles filled with an amber liquid, he said.

The bag"s owner, Francisco Ramirez, told TSA officers that the bottles were filled with honey, Youngblood said. Further testing confirmed that honey was the only substance present in the bottles, said FBI spokesman Steve Dupre. No traces of explosives were found.

"Why in this day and age would someone take a chance carrying honey in Gatorade bottles?" Youngblood said. "That itself is an alarm. It"s hard to understand."

At the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, a bomb-sniffing dog indicated there was something suspicious about a piece of luggage, causing authorities to call a bomb squad and clear parts of the airport for more than an hour.

But the bag was never put on a flight and nothing suspicious was found, officials said.

The piece of luggage was only a placeholder airline employees put on the luggage carousel to signal to other employees that all the bags have been unloaded from a flight, airport spokesman Patrick Hogan said. In airport jargon, it"s called a "last bag."

"It was kind of a beat-up old bag that was simply used as a marker," he said.

Investigators in California said Ramirez flew to Bakersfield Dec. 23 to spend Christmas with his sister and was returning Tuesday. The 31-year-old gardener from Milwaukee was not arrested and was cooperating with authorities, officials said.

When TSA agents opened one of the five bottles and tested the contents, the resulting fumes nauseated them, Youngblood said. Both were treated and released at a local hospital.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff"s Office bomb squad was performing further tests to determine why at least two positives were recorded for both TNT and the organic explosive acetone peroxide, or TATP.

Bakersfield is about 110 miles north of Los Angeles.

Investigators want to know whether any chemical Ramirez uses in his gardening work could have left traces of potential explosives. They will also run tests on the substance to see if the smoke beekeepers use to subdue the insects could have triggered a false positive test on honey.

All flights into and out of Meadows Field were canceled for much of Tuesday as authorities searched the terminal for other potential explosives.

The discovery came less than two weeks after a man was charged with trying to destroy a Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day. He is alleged to have smuggled an explosive device on board the aircraft and set if off, but the device sparked only a fire and not the intended explosion.

Airline security has been tightened since the arrest.

Hogan said any number of things could have caused the dog at the Minneapolis airport to react. "We"ll probably never know what it was," he said.

He said the dogs have been working more hours since the Detroit incident. However, he doubted overwork contributed to Tuesday"s false indication.

While the Minneapolis airport"s reaction annoyed some passengers, it didn"t bother Cindy Kangas, 49, of Braham in east-central Minnesota, who arrived at the airport after the incident and was waiting in a long line at the security checkpoint.

She didn"t think airport officials overreacted and instead showed they cared.

"For one thing, if it"s them or their families they"d want to make sure it was all checked out," she said.

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Associated Press writers Amy Forliti and Chris Williams in Minneapolis and Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

PENNINGTON, N.J. – Royal Caribbean won the award for best family cruise line and Carnival won in the category of best for first-time cruisers in CruiseCritic.com"s annual editors" picks awards.

PENNINGTON, N.J. – Royal Caribbean won the award for best family cruise line and Carnival won in the category of best for first-time cruisers in "s annual editors" picks awards.

Royal Caribbean"s Freedom Class of ships also won the awards for best cruises for kids and best for teens.

Holland America won in the best for cabins and best for activities categories, while Carnival won best for nightlife.

Other honors included Princess winning best for weddings at sea, the Celebrity Solstice and Equinox sister ships winning for best new ship, Carnival winning for best main dining, Oceania for best specialty restaurants and Celebrity winning for best healthy dining.

Best cruise for couples honors went to Azamara, while best for sophisticated singles went to Cunard. Crystal won best luxury cruise line, while Princess won best for romance and Lindblad won best for adventure.

The award for best river cruise line went to Uniworld, while Windstar won for best sailing ship.

Disney"s Castaway Cay was named the best cruise line private island.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Travel industry officials say more airline flights to Alaska this summer may boost competition and result in lower fares to some Lower 48 cities.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Travel industry officials say more airline flights to Alaska this summer may boost competition and result in lower fares to some Lower 48 cities.

The Anchorage Daily News says Continental, United and US Airways all plan to add daily nonstop service between Anchorage and Portland, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia. From Fairbanks, Delta plans a new flight to Salt Lake City and Frontier adds a flight to Denver. trip to Denver and Salt Lake City. No flights are being added, however, to Seattle, a major transfer hub for Alaskans.

Industry officials say the added competition should drop air fares as the new flights are added in May and June.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The state of Florida is suing online travel reservation companies over hotel taxes, the latest in a string of lawsuits nationwide claiming the sites owe local authorities millions of dollars.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The state of Florida is suing online travel reservation companies over hotel taxes, the latest in a string of lawsuits nationwide claiming the sites owe local authorities millions of dollars.

Attorney General Bill McCollum sued Expedia and Orbitz on Tuesday, claiming they failed to pay Florida the full amount of taxes collected on hotel room rentals through their sites.

"The customer is paying the tax already," said McCollum, who is running for governor in 2010. "Orbitz and Expedia are not remitting to the state all the taxes they have collected."

Consumers are charged a rate when they book a room online, and the company later reimburses the hotels a lesser amount, allowing them to pocket service fees. The taxes are paid on that less expensive rate, prompting legal action by cities and states that claim they"re being cheated out of millions of dollars in tax dollars.

"The decision to file a lawsuit will hurt the interest of millions of travelers and tourism workers in Florida," said Andrew Weinstein, spokesman for the Washington-based Industry Travel Services Association. "It will make it more expensive for visitors to come to the state."

Weinstein said the lawsuits amount to little more than attempts by trial attorneys to make some money.

"The fees from traditional travel agents, tour operators and other middlemen have never been taxed," he said, adding that online travel companies "only connect consumers with good deals on rooms in the same way that offline travel agents or tour operators do."

The Florida lawsuit — filed in a state Circuit Court in Tallahassee — claims the companies have been keeping some of the tax as profit.

Similar complaints against online travel companies have been filed by cities including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Atlanta and the tourist town of Branson, Mo. Officials have alleged that online travel services charged customers for local tourism taxes but never remitted those funds.

"In these tough budget times, I hope we can ensure that these companies pay what may be owed to Florida, instead of pocketing the tax our citizens have already shelled out," Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink said Tuesday.

Sink, the lone Democrat on the Florida Cabinet, had pushed for action on the issue at last week"s Cabinet meeting. She and McCollum, a Republican, are seeking their respective party nominations for governor and could end up facing each other in Florida"s 2010 race.

SHERMAN, Conn. – Corporate travel is expected to decline 15 percent this year, according to a new report from PhoCusWright, the travel industry research company.

SHERMAN, Conn. – Corporate travel is expected to decline 15 percent this year, according to a new report from PhoCusWright, the travel industry research company.

In contrast, the total U.S. travel market is projected to decline only 11 percent in 2009, dipping below 2006 levels, PhoCusWright"s "U.S. Corporate Travel Distribution." report said.

Historically, corporate travel has comprised about 40 percent of the total U.S. travel market, but that share is expected to shrink to 35 percent in 2010, the PhoCusWright report said.

"Current economic challenges and public scrutiny of travel and entertainment spending has placed corporate travel on the chopping block," said Susan Steinbrink, PhoCusWright"s senior research and corporate market analyst.

She said not only will there be less corporate travel, but there will be "stricter policies and tougher policing when spending does occur."

On the plus side, she noted that the downturn will "positively affect innovation," in everything from optimizing value in travel to leveraging new technologies "from mobile to video conferencing."

PARIS – A French official says about 60 crew members on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship have been diagnosed with swine flu and confined to their cabins while the ship is in a French port.

PARIS – A French official says about 60 crew members on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship have been diagnosed with swine flu and confined to their cabins while the ship is in a French port.

Alpes-Maritime regional spokeswoman Geraldine Soulier says another 70 ship employees are showing symptoms.

She says some of the crew aboard the Voyager of the Seas had shown symptoms before the ship departed earlier this week from Barcelona, Spain.

The ship arrived Friday in Villefranche-sur-Mer as part of a Mediterranean tour, and local officials allowed the ship"s 3,600 passengers to visit the town before the boat leaves Friday night for Marseille.

Officials at Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. could not immediately be reached for comment.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The travel industry is working to redefine itself as a key player in the American economy by showing how it helps companies improve profits, serves as a source of tax revenue and provides jobs.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The travel industry is working to redefine itself as a key player in the American economy by showing how it helps companies improve profits, serves as a source of tax revenue and provides jobs.

Geoff Freeman, U.S. Travel Association senior vice president, said factors that include the recession, a spurt of public anger over extravagant business travel and politicians who lashed out at the travel industry resulted in $2 billion worth of events and meetings being canceled when the rancor was at its peak early this year.

If over the years the industry had done a better job of articulating why it is a vital economic force, the damage likely would not have been so great, Freeman said Tuesday at a national marketing forum organized by the association.

"We had left ourselves exposed, terribly exposed. We were the folks that were an easy target," Freeman said.

Steve Moore, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau, said hospitality groups focus too much on hotel and meal taxes, when they should tout their economic impact, including sales taxes and property taxes they bring communities.

The convention business can do more to paint a picture of the people who work in the industry and note that travelers don"t drain city services, Moore said.

Citing research by Oxford Economics, a consulting firm that collaborates with Oxford University"s business college, Freeman said that for every dollar companies spend on business travel, they get an average of $12.50 in revenue and $3.80 in profit.

Christine Duffy, president and CEO of Maritz Travel Co., a corporate meeting organizer, said meetings are a tool for keeping "employees engaged and motivated."

"Sales and marketing executives know they have to get back in front of their people," she said.

Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world"s largest retailer, didn"t hold back this year for its annual meeting, which is webcast and shown on TVs in its thousands of stores. Managers from Walmart properties around the world gather in June for a week of training, culminating with nearly 20,000 people packing a basketball arena for a celebrity-filled cheering session and business meeting.

But Moore said even groups like teachers unions whose bylaws require annual gatherings are finding turnout as much as 30 percent below normal.

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On the Net:

U.S. Travel Association:

Oxford Economics study on business travel:

Last spring"s outbreak of swine flu caused cruise lines to cancel visits to areas of Mexico and even quarantine infected passengers. On Tuesday, executives at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. said the cruise operator was still feeling lingering effects as the virus spreads around the world.

Last spring"s outbreak of swine flu caused cruise lines to cancel visits to areas of Mexico and even quarantine infected passengers. On Tuesday, executives at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. said the cruise operator was still feeling lingering effects as the virus spreads around the world.

But Adam Goldstein, CEO of the company"s Royal Caribbean International line, said the carrier"s top doctor was making rounds onboard ships to work with staff on protocols to be followed if there are any onboard outbreaks of the illness also known as H1N1.

QUESTION: What kind of affect is the swine flu having on ship operations?

RESPONSE: "We"re not seeing very much H1N1 incidents on our ships at moment, which is something that we"re quite pleased about. ... We"re optimistic with regard to the medical capabilities of our ships and our sanitation procedures and our ability to minimize the impact of H1N1 on board our ships. We believe that the public is understanding since April and May when the illness turned out to be not as severe as was originally feared. While it is a public health issue, it"s not a particular issue for the cruise industry."