Ha Long City, Vietnam

 Day 42 Ha Long City
No scheduled tour today to give us a breather before having the next 7 days booked. Most shops don’t
open before 10 so we jumped on an electric 3 bencher like yesterday in Hanoi’s French Quarter that
indicated it was a free shuttle. Oops. It went to the end of the pier and turned around at a large hotel.



Boarded the bigger shuttle bus and headed the 20 minutes into town to the big shiny fake silver box
mall with a grocery store on the 3rd level and most big names that are reminiscent of our own
disappearing malls. The escalators were situated so that you needed to walk at least half of the next
levels. Very capitalist.

The mall


Jerry found an ATM finally, outside the mall. Currency exchange in the millions as $US:VND is 1:23,695. Behind the flashy mall is where all the locals are. Huge fish market, fresh and dried, shops upon shops of spices, vegies, fruit, etc. They seemed a bit surprised to see us wandering and taking photos. Lots of local shops along the many streets but we didn’t see one we wanted to venture into.








Did see an anomaly peeking through some rocks offshore. Looked like a shuttle vessel off the the Star
Trek Enterprise. We didn’t ever find out what it was.

It's the object on the left - what do you think it is? 


Jumped back on the shuttle a half hour or so later and worked on the blog before gifting ourselves with
some informal bridge. Enjoyed the sail away party on deck as we pushed off at 5 and watched the sun
set. Lovely photos.




Nice casual day ending with wearing my new Vietnamese outfit to supper. Fun.

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