Halong Bay

A sweet talkative young man named Tang (wrong spelling on purpose, but this is how you pronounce it), picks us up at the hotel, 160 km in 5 hours, with a pit stop and some rounds to pick up a few other guests, surprisingly enough a few from the US. It’s somewhat misty out there, giving the bay a spiritual feel of a Japanese painting, though in reality most of those paintings would sell far less than the same painting on a sunny day.

The boat is quite grand, dark wood, three levels, with a nice upper deck, and a Viking feel to it. A welcome drink, a break and the boat stops moving. Transfer to another boat and head towards a bay within the bay. We pass countless islands, all rising out of the water in dramatic cliffs, climbing high up as if they intended to be a play ground for climbers. Powerful rock with some vegetation on it, some are smaller some enormous. I have seen the like in Yangshu near Guilin in the Southeast of China, though here it is rising out of an endless sea. In south Thailand I have seen a huge monolith like this as well in the ocean, but not nearly as grand or extensive as here. The boat is smooth and calming, not too warm, not too cold. Nice fellow travelers include people from Singapore, India, Ireland, and the US. The boat docks, hop on to a smaller boat and climb up one of the small but very tall islands. Sorry, but now words will do justice to the view. I’ll try anyway. Steep stairs through vegetation, an opening, terrace like exposes the bay with its numerous island monoliths, twenty or so large wooden boats as if taken from a scene of a new movie pretending to be old, some smaller local faded wooden boats roaming around and vast skies. Endless sky.

Dinner on the boat, Karaoke that we did as a sing along as no one wanted to be Madonna or John Lennon, a moment of squid fishing close to midnight and sleep. Slept well on the boat.
After breakfast on the boat, we climbed into the “Amazing Cave”, which was really nice indeed, with stalagmites and stalactites, though the view from above was really what makes it fantastic. The rash cans were shaped as black and white dolphins or penguins. Now where did they get that idea? Did they ship the trashcans all the way from Iceland, or do they have a northern person design the cans around here? We shipped to another Island, part of the Cat Ba national park, where we mounted on bicycles with no gear and squeaking breaks, with a basket up front we head out, riding along the green water, surrounded by cliff rock walls, passing a Buddhist temple that is used twice a month to pray for rains, entering a big valley with more fish farms, along some rice fields and goats set to the background of the grand monoliths with the bushy green and mustard yellow, like receding hair on a curly big headed Yemen, entered a village and explored a bit of their daily life.

Next we went kayaking, through the beautiful chilli waters, passing by floating homes in between the islands, circling around some monoliths, going under a little arch connecting two islands, rested for a moment soaking it all in, the paddled powerfully, letting it all out, went for a swim in the cold water, dived head first from the boat, and dried out in the barely peaking sun.

Stayed on Cat Ba, a nice island with not much going for it at night, a good thing since there is less of harassment, strolled the concrete boardwalk, ate some ice cream and climbed to bed.

Last day is travel day, boats through the beautiful scenery, the grand rocks with floating homes in front of them, the small fish farms that look actually pretty good and natural, maybe I’ll be OK buying the farm raised shrimp from Vietnam at Trader Joe’s next time, water which obeys the rhythm of the wind, and dances slightly, rocking the boat like a good DJ, using someone else’s music to rock individuals moving by.