Halong Bay

Anyway we finally tore ourselves away and jumped on the bus to Halong Bay. About 4 hours including a stop at a craft village which was solely for the disabled workers. As always at these places amazing to see how quickly they produce such intricate work. Needlework, paintings, lacquer work, woodwork, again the Golden Girls went mad, how will they ever carry all this stuff home.

Heading out

Halong Bay is a spectacular area of limestone columns and islands off the north coast of Vietnam. Again Unesco listed. We boarded our boat which we were staying on over night and headed out into the bay. First thing that strikes you is how many boats are at the dock and how many are out on the bay, and secondly how hazy, boarding on overcast it is, we're told it's almost always like this. We toured around the bay area, stopped to go into some caves for a while and at around 5, dropped anchor for the night. Some of us dived of the boat for a swim, the water was a lovely temperature. After dinner I lay in the open air on the top deck with a bottle of local red wine and my book, lovely.

Jumping in

Junk on the Bay