THE MARKET, HALONG BAY, VIETNAM

---

Thurs 18^th Jan – I, and almost the remainder of the ship, caught a stinking cold. All of a sudden you heard lots of hacking coughs around the ship with loads of people blowing their nose. When something spreads around the ship, it sure spreads quickly. So with a streaming cold, this day saw us into Halong Bay (pronounced Harlong Bay, not hey), in winter and very cold.

This was the one place I was dying to see with its limestone cliffs jutting out of the sea and I’d wanted to go there for ages and ages.

Sailing into Halong Bay was actually through the Bay itself, so I was up at 5.00 a.m. for this and even then I missed half of it. Even with the mist and rain and cold, sailing into it was magical that time of the morning, as you could just see dark shadows appearing either side of the ship, which gradually got clearer as it got lighter.

I was looking forward to Halong Bay as I’d booked a private tour with a group from the ship, which included 4 hours of sailing in it. We anchored offshore and of course got the obligatory beggars. I felt very sorry for this lady with the kids, as she was there the entire day and probably only got about $3. People were chucking over fruit until the Captain advised against it - he didn't want them getting caught in the propellers when we sailed away.

We met the tour guide on the pier and after a 2 hour drive, stopped at a Temple. Vietname is very dirty. It's also very crowded so most dwellings are built up, rather than out.

Next stop was off to Halong market – this was in a building with several floors selling everything under the sun. The nicest thing was that if you walked to the back of the market, there was a really great view of Halong Bay, as this market was built right on its edge. The worst thing was that a few of us girls wanted to go to the loo – when we walked into the Ladies (for want of other words), it was almost like a men’s urinal - with women just crouching down for everyone to see and having a pee. My friends and I just looked at one another in astonishment. They did have cubicles with western toilets in them, but none of the Vietnamese seemed to use them for a pee.

---