Ha - la - la - la - la - Long Bay

Halong Bay, Vietnam, 7/24/11 - 7/26/11

Harriet, Lauren, Becky and I join 75 other backpackers first thing the next morning as we depart for a three-day, two-night trip to Halong Bay in North Vietnam (English: "Descending Dragon Bay"). After several hours of cramped van riding and another chaotic period in the port of Halong City, our group is split between four boat as we head off into the bay.

The UNESCO World Heritage site is littered with nearly 2,000 small shrub-covered limestone karsts that form grottoes and lagoons throughout crystal blue waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The scenery is distinctly Avatar-ish, except fortunately there are no lethal dragon-birds or rhino-saurs. But then again, James Cameron has never met the young women on my cruise. Most of the ships in the bay are "Junk Boats," traditional Vietnamese two or three-story wooden vessels with large yellow triangular-shaped sails.

Our boat

Traditional Vietnamese junk boats

We spend the afternoon jumping off the boat's third story roof into waters so warm they feel like a jacuzzi. Hardly refreshing in the 100+degree weather, but we're not complaining. Lunch is massive family-style spread of grilled shrimp, roasted tofu with peppers, fried rice, grilled calamari, sauteed morning glory, and oddly, potato salad. All the men in the group quickly spot the vegetarians and immediately decide they will be our tablemates at dinner.

Limestone kyrsts

Following lunch, we jump on kayaks and spend two hours paddling through the emerald green waters and dome-shaped islands of the Halong archipelago. My kayak-mate is Lauren, or "Loz", and together we share several beers, an affinity for colorful Vietnamese sombreros, and a terrible sense of direction. At any given moment, we are either embarrassingly behind the collective group or causing a 30-kayak traffic jam. As a mass, we resemble a school of cross-eyed uncoordinated fish. At one point, our group docks at one island's large cave. While we go spelunking deep inside, we look out to see the entire bay silhouetted by the cave's stalactites. I monkey climb up to one of the cave's bluffs with two mad Scots to properly enjoy the view.









We continue on, passing by a village of peasants who live on tiny floating shacks, each roughly the size of hotel bathrooms. Although they don't have much, their smiles show they understand that the views from their front doors are their real wealth.

We eat another shared feast for dinner, which includes roasted snapper with scallions (which I hog) and steamed clams, before watching the sun go down and paint the whole bay red. We sleep on our boat, and I share a properly luxurious bunk with Becky, replete with golden accents and a marble bathroom.

Our boat, the Jolly Roger, sets sail early the next morning docking at the private Castaway Island. We throw our bags in low bamboo-thatched open-air huts and head 30 ft away to the ivory white sand beach. The day is spent rock climbing, sunbathing, playing badminton, cliff jumping, and kayaking. Castaway Island joins a handful of other slate gray limestone krysts with bright green shrubs to form a small bay within the bay.

One of our guides, Matt from Kansas, takes us out for innertube rides strapped to the back of a large motorboat. I've tubed several times before but this feels straight out of Top Gun. We're going so fast, I'm sure we'd enter a new time zone if the tubes were equipped with flux capacitors. We're holding on with everything in our being as the boat makes sharp turns and we whip around, flying over the wake, pulled all the way to the side of the boat. My tube mate and I are both almost fully off the inflatable device as the g-forces start getting higher. Matt looks on, laughing, signaling for the driver to go faster. When we wipe out, the spills are straight out of the Summer Olympics -- huge flips, barrel rolls, backwards tumbles. At one point, the neighboring tubers (attached to the same rope) wipe out and their resulting empty tube violently flips over our neighboring tube, smacking us both in the face. Due to his hometown, Matt's nickname is "Dorothy," but based on the way he tries to kill his tubing students, the Wicked Witch may be a more appropriate name. We tremble like cowardly lions, hoping not to suffer. In addition to trying not soil oneself, all we can think about mid-tubing is, "there's no place like home." Off the clock, I wonder if Matt performs professional motorboat racing as he's truly the Mario Andretti of scenic water sports.

 

 When we finally make it back to the island, kissing the sand below our feet, Matt tells us how a boy from rural Kansas ended up as a Halong Bay tour guide. Post-college, he was moving up the ranks at a large hotel conglomerate in Aspen, Colorado. Years passed by like seconds, he says, and most of that time was spent in a cubicle staring in front of a computer. A few years in, he looked around and noticed most of his friends getting married and others not too far away from childbirth. He decided life was coming at him a bit too fast and traded his briefcase for a backpack and headed to Vietnam. Matt ventured on the same Hanoi Backpackers-sponsored tour of Halong Bay, and when the owners mentioned they were looking for English-speaking guides, he jumped at the opportunity. Dorothy has been striking fear into the hearts of innertubers ever since. Amen.

Dinner is a barbecue of marinated pork, chicken, and fish grilled over charcoal as the sun sets. We sit with our feet in the sand, eating the grilled meats alongside fried noodles and watermelon. Across the lagoon, the setting sun turns the limestone islands into silhouetted domes and casts a pink and yellow stream over the water. The night is spent prancing around the island in colorful striped Vietnamese sombreros, which are essentially identical to the Mexican variety.

At around 3am, our collective group sprints into bay to play in its legendary bio-luminescence. As you move your arms and legs with increased velocity in the water, the area around your body glows with greater vibrancy. The water is aglow with what looks like silver crystals and we spend an hour in the shimmering water despite the sharp rocks on the surface below. The dip reminds me of swimming in a sea filled with flavor crystals - those little blue shiny rocks found in Ice Breakers gum or Max White toothpaste. The entire experience is literally and figuratively illuminating. Maybe it's the whiskey, but it seems like we found access to a secret pool on a foreign planet. Hopefully the glowing crystals aren't radioactive as some of us left our trunks ashore.

Note: Some photos from Becky Lauren, Elaine Cunningham and Stacie Chang