An early morning start and a sad farewell to those on the Lao trip who were leaving. Khartoum is still with us and a new tour party to get to know. A 4 hour drive past extensive paddy fields and big industrial units brought us to Halong City harbour where after a few minutes as tickets were bought for access to the bay and perusal of passports we boarded a tender to take us to our junk ship for our overnight cruise.
The bay is quite stunning,over 2000 limestone islands covered in greenery dot the horizon and tourist junks are to-img and fro-img everywhere but quietly and slowly . We ate a lovely Chinese fish lunch before anchoring to visit a little island with a sandy beach. A great view of all the islands from the top and a refreshing dip afterwards.
After dinner some of us tried our hand at squid fishing off the back of the boat...we caught one!