Hmmm...which to choose?
Halong Bay is also known as "Bay of the Descending Dragon" due to a legend about the place, which goes something like this:
"Long ago when their forefathers were fighting foreign invaders from the north, the gods from heaven sent a family of dragons to help defend their land. This family of dragons descended upon what is now Ha Long bay and began spitting out jewels and jade. Upon hitting the sea, these jewels turned into the various islands and islets dotting the seascape and formed a formidable fortress against the invaders. The locals were able to keep their land safe and formed what is now the country of Vietnam. The Dragon family fell so much in love with this area for its calm water and for the reverence of the people of Vietnam that they decided to remain on earth."
So basically, we were traveling amongst dragon loogies that were formerly precious jewels. Bummer about the transformation.
Treasure hunting aside, the place is magnificent.
This view really, really doesn't suck
Enormous granite outceroppings...again? Yawwwwn...
There are roughly 1500 islands, exploding up out of water so blue and clear that you expect to see birds flying around in it. Each droplet of an island is such an alarming green against that brilliant blue that they seem to be emeralds set into a vast sapphire block. To get to Halong Bay, myself and my companions who I'd been on/off traveling with since our Mekong River difficulties got on a bus, that took us to a port, where we got onto a boat. Wary, as my luck with these people and boats was catastrophic at best, I boarded the three story high vessel, glancing hastily around for life preservers and escape pods. Finding none, I began to worry, but was reassured by the legend that Dragons wouldn't allow anyone to drown there, and that they would come to save you if there was any danger. I think that someone told me this just to make me feel better, though how the idea of being plucked out of the ocean by an enormous set of dragon talons is supposed to be comforting is beyond me.
The dragon usually hides behind one of these two islands. If you look closely, you can just see his tail sticking out from behind the left hand one. Really, it's totally there
Anyway, we were off. The plan being to spend one night on the boat and another night on the island of Cat Ba, the largest inhabited island in the area. I cannot recall if in my ramblings I have discussed my proclivity for flinging myself off of high things into water. I really, really love doing this. Just point me towards a cliff, rope swing, ledge, whatever, and if it looks deep enough, I'm jumping. The thrill of being in the air and falling for so long that you can think to yourself "damn, this is really high" then scream, then have time for a second thought of "Damn! This is probably going to hurt my feet huh?" is unparalleled in my experience. And you know that it's high when you can complete both thoughts before crashing loudly and splashily into a 10 meters of clean, ice blue water.
All of the above is relevant, because by the time that the boat had slowed down enough to drop anchor, I had already leaped headfirst off of the third floor deck. In case any of you are unfamiliar with my athletic history, nowhere in the compliation of Norm's Endeavors would you find "proficiency at diving." One big headache later, I decided that perhaps next time I would enter the water feet first, as is my custom. We spent several hours jumping of of the boat, lazily paddling around in the water, and attempting to "board and conquer", to absolutely none of the crews amusement. Arrr....
After a visit to some caves that looked as if they were carved out of molded plastic and were the set of some crazy movie about aliens and zombies and stuff, we returned to the boat to find our way to the kayaks.
As it turns out, the kayaks were stored at a fish farm.
Despite the lead in above, this is not a picture of the fish farms. I didn't take one. This'll have to suffice.
Halong Bay is an interesting place for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the manner in which people live there. Imagine, if you would be so kind, an entire neighborhood of single family homes, clapboard and shingled with tile and corrugated tin, floating peacefully on a gently rolling current, kept cool in the shadow of a massive rising cliff face, overhung with weeping willow-esque branches and high standing, high branched trees. These homes all float due to dozens of enormous plastic jars and containers, lashed toghether under the very floorboards of the homes and all of the homes are attached to each other by lengths of rope. Gypsies and traveling caravans have nothing on the uniqueness of life that these people have created. For the most part, the homes have a sort of loosely understood "backyard area" in which there are perhaps four rows of 2x4's arranged into squares, under which hang nets. These are the fish farms, and if you have ever eaten "fresh sea fish" that wasn't native to your area, there is a reasonable chance that it came from here. Fish is one of Vietnam's biggest exports and those fish come from fish farms scattered all throughout the country.
Pieter, Mathias and Norm, kickin' it on some dragon loogies
Getting off of the boat and onto the floating 2x4's was challenging enough in and of itself. Doing so after looking into one of the cages and seeing enormous, shark-like fish swimming around in what seemed to be a state of high agitation made the task all the more difficult. Oh, and there were dogs. As having an electronic security system to protect your home and fish out here would be non-feasible for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which being the lack of electricity and the time it would take for a rent-a-cop to get a boat out from the mainland, home security is provided by dogs. Big dogs. Really, really big dogs. As soon as our boat pulled up, two of the dogs came dashing down the planks, but didn't bark. The other two dogs split up on different beams and held back, just watching. I'm not sure when exactly someone figured out how to teach military tactics to canines, but I was impressed. In a supremely stupid and unthinking gesture, I reached out to give one of the dogs a friendly pat on the head, you know, to let him know that we were "a-okay." Maybe all our earlier pirate posturing hadn't worn off yet, but the bark/growl/snap/lunge that followed my efforts were enough to see me leap backwards about 5 feet and nearly fall into the big shark pit (which wasn't a shark pit, it was some other fish that apaprently wouldn't eat me. Whatever, they looked like sharks). Convinced that it was time to get into kayaks and get far the hell away, I lowered myself in, gripped the paddle and took off.
There is something very humbling about being in a tiny, easily swamped boat, paddling hard against waves and current, and having the sun completely obscured by the rising karsts. Coming around the corner of an island, the sun is suddenly at full capacity, lighting up everything around you and reflecting gloroiusly off of all that surrounds you. As previously mentioned, the water is nearly perfectly clear, allowing you to see down through the sea perhaps 10-12 meters, 10-12 meters of absolutely empty, microorganism flecked water.
If you have to squint to look at this picture, just try and imagine how bright it was to be there. Yeah, thats right. Pretty damn bright. (I'm sorry, my captioning skills seem to be lacking right now)
It was a hard choice between staying in the kayak to get to the beach that was our destination, or repeatedly flinging yourself into the water. I managed to supress my baser instincts for the duration, but only just.
The rest of my time in Halong Bay saw the whole crew on Cat Ba island, living it up in the extremely toursity town and catching a cold in an air-conditioned room (only the second "air con" room that I've stayed in in over 4 months. Both times I've come down with the sniffles. Apparently I'm no longer able to handle comfort).
Upon returning to Hanoi, my compatriots elected to head down South, a decision that I was as yet unable to make, because of the wonderful things that I had heard about Nothern Vietnam, namely the small border town of Sapa.
A few crazy bia hoi filled nights later, I arrived via overnight train into the small, but rapidly growing (read: tourism has found this place in a big way) city of Sapa.
Descending view of the rice paddies.
The city itself can be walked end-to-very-steep-end in about 45 minutes. However, in those 45 minutes you will encounter people hailing from no less than 3 separate hill tribes, scores of travelers and jewelery makers, and a thriving open air meat market at which you can by fish the size of a cows leg, and a severed cows leg the size of you. It's quite an experience.
The main activity in Sapa is hill-tribe trekking, and there are about 8 gazillion companies all vying for your money. Feeling a bit pressured due to the extremely subtle sales techniques ("You come with me, you bring money (tugs sleeve)...we go now!) I set off walking on my own.
I love mountain towns. I really do. I think that the same elements that draw people to so called "chilled out surf towns" are the same elements that draw me to hard-to-get-to, often cold, places. The air doesn't smell like smog, the people are generally friendlier, you only have to open your eyes and glance slightly upwards to catch a breathtaking view, and noone finds it odd if you just decide to go off walking into the surrounding hills for a few days. A deep breath of mountain air flavored with noodle soup later, I was off walking to the nearby Hmong village of Cat Cat. Despite my previous culinary inquiries, I decided to not push my luck by asking about the naming of the village. After an hour walk down winding, steeply switch-backed roads, I arrived in the vast, stepped rice paddies of Cat Cat.
I did ALL of this in one day. I am very efficient.
The ingenuity that rice producing peoples bring to their endeavors is nothing short of remarkable. as each plateau must be filled to the top with an exact proportion of water, an overage causing the plants to drown and too little water causing themn to wither, yet the most sophisticated piece of machinery that I saw employed belonged to this guy...
John Deere hasn't quite made it out here yet...
The water levels remain constant regardless of flow, simply by having carefully placed and sized holes in the walls of the paddies. While marveling at the ecological efficiency that had clearly been handed down as innate knowledge through generations of farmers, you couldn't help but notice the many interestingly dressed children that swarmed you as you walked. You couldn't miss them really, because they spend most day light hours trying to get you to buy small bracelets, shirts and necklaces that they have woven. The ethnic group doing the most selling were the Red Tzao people, who dressed very distinctively indeed.
Fun fact: The only time that these people weren't smiling was for this picture. I don't know why, but they refused to look happy in photographs. Maybe they are allergic to the flash?
They were overall, a lovely group of people (all women whom I met now that I think about it), some of whom took me into their homes and fed me some sort of noodle and chicken soup. Not quite how grandma makes it, but good nonetheless.
Even in the day time, the super-ninjas of Sapa remain elusive. Somewhere in town, there were four completely naked guys with ninja stars trying to remain inconspicuous.
The following day saw me hiring a 4x4 and a driver, and basically just tooling around in the mountains, occasionally stopping in a small village to play with the children and be hassled to buy things. Getting anywhere in this area took quite a while, so it was only towards the end of the day that I made it to "the waterfall."
Guess how it got its name...?
After doing some calculations and realizing that 1. I am bad at math, 2. I am bad at planning and 3. I only had about 2.5 weeks left on my Vietnam visa, I reluctantly hightailed it back to Hanoi, carrying on to the South of Vietnam.
The disparity of the places that I described above only serves to highlight how incredible a place Vietnam is. You can go from clean blue ocean, to high blue mountain skies as fast as you can make the decision to do so. And as I was to see, all of this contrast was merely a prologue to what I later experienced during the rest of my time in Vietnam.
Next: Why you shouldn't even consider buying your clothes from anyplace except Vietnam ever again, I arrive in Saigon and madness ensues, and sober reflections on a terrible period in recent history.
1 comment:
UNREAL pictures. bring me home a dog????
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