A quick swim at Cat Ba
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2008
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Trip End
Aug 01, 2009
Our tour package includes an overnight stay on Cat Ba Island. This is the place to buy pearls!! Pearls are everywhere, and women have impossible amounts of necklaces wrapped around their arms for sale. It seems such a tough way to make a living. It might be ok if there were one or two people selling the goods, but there are six or seven all hanging together waiting for the tourists to step off of the bus, or off of the street into the restaraunt. They all sport the same goods, exactly the same. I don't know much about pearls, but I suspect that the pearls they sell are low quality, being of irregular shape, and having striations around their middles. They even sell the inside of the oyster shell which has four or five pearls, again in odd shapes, still adhered to the shell. They are actually quite pretty, and made into a pendant for a necklace.
