Halong Bay Vietnam

At 08:30 this morning we joined a group of passengers aboard a Vietnamese Junk sailing through Halon Bay in Vietnam. It is amazing how quickly you become blase about these trips, therefore, we were not expecting anything special. Just how wrong we were. Hopefully the following pictures will convey the beauty of the islands. All were covered in vegetation and made up of limestone. Our guide told us that they have over 4000 islands throughout the area which is now a world heritage site since 1994. Halong Bay is located within the Gulf of Tonkin and only 3 hours from Hanoi. On returning to the ship just after 1pm, we immediately caught the Tender to take us ashore as Arcadia was on anchor. I forgot it was Sunday and all the Banks would be closed, which meant I only had a small amount of US dollars to tide us by. “Not good enough” says Carol “I have gifts to buy and require currency”, so we went to a new Novatel for lunch which allowed us to cash Hong Kong dollars into a local currency. This was a very unique experience as £100 equals two million seven hundred thousand local currency. This made shopping a maths lesson as well as honing your negotiation skills with the local trader. The rule of thumb was take a 100% of the first price and work until you reach a compromise. Carol was rubbish at this, all they needed to do was bring out a baby holding the goods and she would melt, telling me to just give them the money. Fear not I have not lost my marbles yet so both sides were satisfied. Both of us agree that today was one of the highlights so far, a great experience from extremely friendly people.