Sea Legs

During our stay in Hanoi we spent a day and a night cruising around a place called Ha Long bay. It's a popular tourist thing to do and not too far from the city, it's essentially a night aboard a boat in a UNESCO world heritage site surrounded by thousands of limestone karsts. Many boats (of different levels of luxury) depart Ha Long harbour every day and spend the night anchored among the rocks (see picture above), at night there's a distinct party vibe and many of the boats have deck disco's, younger people boogying late into the night etc. 

The cabins on our particular boat were basic but amply good enough, air conditioning, en-suite shower and toilet and double beds. Some of the other boats looked very plush, some even superyacht looking. The food aboard was great and all prepared fresh by the crew, kind of Asian tapas with lots of fish and crustaceans of various kinds including delicious oysters from the bay (it's famous for pearls and oyster farming). My only negative about the trip was the shear amount of pollution in the water, rubbish from the many tourist boats and local fishermen accumulates in the shallow inlets and bays, I guess environmental protection doesn't trump tourist dollars and I worry that pretty soon the natural beauty of the place will be spoiled.

Of course with such a constant influx of foreigners there are whole industries set up to exploit them, we stopped at a couple of places on route to the bay where we could stretch our legs, pick up an ice cream and become captive consumers for 30 minutes or so. Pearls were a big thing there and pretty cheap, both natural and farmed versions were available an a decent pair of earrings came in at around £100, of course some were a lot more, depending on quality and size etc. There was and interesting talk and demonstration about how the pearls are seeded into the oysters and removed once fully grown (see below)

Along with the pearl stop we also called in to an institution that cares for people with disabilities, many of whom have missing or deformed limbs due to the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Even today this vile chemical, used to defoliate the jungle by the Americans, is causing problems for people in regions where it was heavily sprayed. To earn a living the residents of the centre we visited make pictures using silk thread of different colours (see photo of orange fruit carrier above) The detail on these was amazing and the range of subjects impressive. Some take many weeks to complete and weren't too expensive, we picked up a small one for around £50, hopefully it'll look nice in a frame and remind us of the trip.

While in Ha Long bay we visited one of the many cave systems there, the cave we walked through was massive, a very impressive set of limestone caverns with many large stalactites and interesting rock formations, the climbing up and down was reasonably tough and although it wasn't massively warm, we did work up a decent sweat. One of the caves is pictured below..