Halong

March 28th/29th
Sea Day/Halong

There’s nothing really exciting to tell about for the sea day, I just got a lot of reading done, so that was good. It’s kind of funny when my friends wake up at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and talk about how they’ve accomplished absolutely nothing that day, when thankfully, I don’t share that problem.
The 29th in Halong was a good day. I got off the ship with the intention to find the internet café that everyone seems to frequent, so I left around noon with my lap top in my backpack ready to start searching. The first place I noticed with a WiFi sign was fairly close to the ship, some restaurant that I thought I’d try. So I go inside, and planning to sit down for a while to work online, order a tea. In Vietnam, the currency is the dong (or so I understand), but they readily except US dollars, so I didn’t think there’d be any difficulty with the money, but when all you have is $20’s and you try to buy tea for a dollar, they don’t like that. The lady behind the bar who I’m ordering from has her calculator out and is showing me exactly how much dong I should be getting in change. This would have been alright if I had another month in Vietnam, but seeing as after this cruise, I won’t be returning to the country, I didn’t want to get stuck with tons of dong I couldn’t use. During the conversation I’m trying to hold with the lady who speaks very little English, a teenager comes up behind me to get my attention, at which point his mother offers to buy me the tea. But seeing as the only reason I wanted tea was that I was going to be using their internet, I declined. I did however ask them if they could change the 20, which they couldn’t, so I moved on to someone sitting two tables down who looked like he worked on the ship. He was able to give me two 10’s, but then also pointed out the internet was terribly slow and wasn’t even worth my time to try. He pointed me in the direction of where he though everyone always went, and I left without purchasing the tea they had in the meantime prepared and placed on the counter for me.
So I left, and started walking further in towards the city to the area I had been on my last visit. Halong has a market there in the city where people sell tons of junk gifts, cheap shirts, pearls, carvings, and a myriad of other Vietnamese items. The afe I was looking for was on the other side of this market, but I had decided to make a right turn before the market, taking me up the hill into the part of the city cruise ship tourists probably don’t wander. Here, it was noticeably dirty, had some very run down buildings, stray dogs, and oddly enough, about a dozen nice looking hotels. I honestly have no idea how these hotels do any business, but they are all over Halong. Anyways, my detour took me about 30 minutes out of my way before I found a suitable road to get me back towards the water and on a road towards the markets, but it was an interesting walk and I’m always up for wandering unfamiliar places. Sure I stick out from the locals, and yeah, everyone on a motorbike approaches me offering their taxi services, but that’s the fun of it all, right?
I did make it back to the market area and was able to sniff out the café where my friends were sitting at doing their computer work. The place was really nice, large, clean, and US friendly. I paid for tea with a $10 and got US bills back, no problem. I hung out there for a while till my battery died and I left to do some shopping.
Now here’s where the real fun starts. I wanted to buy some pearl necklaces, something that Vietnam certainly isn’t sort on. Supposedly, they cultivate pearls near Halong, and the locals have some way of getting to the pearls that aren’t 100% perfect and suitable for high end jewelry stores, which they then turn into necklaces and earrings. The pearls are in fact real, which is hard to believe when you see hundreds of necklaces draped around the arms of street peddlers, but the fire test holds true. If you hold a lighter to the pearls and they melt, then for obvious reasons, they aren’t real. The stand I eventually stopped at made sure to demonstrate this by holding the flame to the pearl for what must have been 15 seconds, having no effect on the pearl. So I find a nice necklace, one with really large round pearls and in a crappy red jewelry case, but still, the best quality I’d come across in the market. The price is $25, about $14 more than I currently have in my pocket. I offer $10, she looks slightly shocked and offended at the low ball offer, so I say OK and leave. She starts screaming, louder and louder as I get further, till I turn around and go see what she’s trying to offer. So she comes back with her calculator and lowers the price to $18, of which is still more than I have in US. I tell her that, show her that I just don’t have it, and again walk away because she won’t give me the necklace for $10. Well, she’s yelling again, but this time I don’t turn around, not until she runs up behind me, grabs my arm, and walks me back to the tent. In showing her that I had too little US, she saw the other currencies that I had in my wallet and was willing to except it. So, on top of $11, I gave her 40 hong kong, and about 50 cents worth of dong I’d picked up earlier. For that she would sell me the necklace, the equivalent of about $18. Well, still didn’t get the price I wanted, but I did like the necklace, so I grabbed one of the smaller pearl necklaces as well, one that she wanted $10 for, and gave her an additional 20 hong kong…absolutely all that was left in my wallet. Well, she took it – so for a grand total of maybe $20, I got the really nice huge pearl necklace and a beautiful smaller one, something that should have totaled $35.
Considering that was my first time really negotiating price with anyone, I’m actually somewhat pleased with myself. It was a good experience to have, not to mention something that will help me the rest of my time in Asia. Following that, considering I had absolutely nothing left to spend, I headed back to the ship to play a big band set that night. Then that’s about it for the day, thanks!