Ha Long Bay

(Apologies for photos, it's been quite rainy and hard to shoot anything but grim-looking landscapes)

Dawn has struck on Ha Long Bay, and we are in our cabins on an "authentic junk," in reality a junk-shaped, diesel powered, mini-cruise ship. It has showers, flush toilets, air conditioning, and a staff that is currently preparing us hot coffee and breakfast. So far on this voyage we have eaten stir-fried squid, steamed clams, boiled shrimp, stuffed crab, poached fish, and French fries. I love seafood, but I am concerned about breakfast.

The event is a two day cruise on Ha Long Bay, in the Gulf of Tonkin, where an ambiguous incident led to a foolish and angry declaration by the US Congress, which was in turn used by successive presidents to widen and prolong the Vietnam War. Our spiffy tour was arranged by our hotel (a bargain at $50 per person for transportation, one night, two days, and a bushel of freshly-killed crustaceans).

We began with a long van ride through a very young country. Most Vietnamese were born after the war, which has filled the country with sprightly 20-somethings.The object of their desire is—unlike the Chinese—not a car, but a motorscooter and an apartment in one of the narrow concrete buildings found everywhere. They are an entirely unique architectural form. They have three stories, two balconies, all squeezed into a building perhaps 12 feet wide. Their street side is garishly painted and often fitted with ornate Art Deco balconies--always empty--while the other sides remain concrete-prison gray. At their base, dozens of people squat at impromptu restaurants, which typically consist of a woman and her daughter ladling out soup to customers who laugh and gesture with chopsticks.

Still, Vietnam is not a place where it is easy to get close to the people—by this I don't mean it's not easy to wrangle a bowl of pho out of the confused woman and her daughter mentioned above. I mean that tourism mostly consists of sitting with other westerners on buses and boats and looking out at the Vietnamese as if you were in some kind of human zoo. A good example of this was a French couple (doctor and radiologist) on our boat who had brought their young daughter for a three week trip. They said, "She is learning a lot, she is seeing poverty. Tres triste."

For all that, it's sometimes nice to be in a zoo. Ha Long Bay is one of the more magical places on earth, a rare instance of beautiful green mountains buried mostly under sea. Our first day began with a visit to a cave, where our guide seemed to think that we would all be interested in seeing stalagmites that (he said) looked like camels or stars or turtles. None, in fact, looked anything like those animals. However, there was one called "finger rock," which did bear a most striking resemblance to a human appendage. Not a hand with a finger pointing in the air, mind you, but from the peals of laughter that rang out in the cave, you'll know it was something far more amusing.

From there, our guides shanghaied us into some cold kayaks—a circumstance that led not to kayaking, but to a huddle of cold tourists shivering on a dock and pooling their money together to buy beers. Our party consisted of three Austrians (who seemed vastly less interested in the scenery than they did the astonishingly reasonable price of Hanoi vodka on the boat), a young French couple who spent most of the time with their faces stuck together, and a chummy Australian who could talk about Brisbane weather for fifteen minutes at a stretch. In all, a good party.

The second day, those of us who were not throwing up Hanoi vodka over the side railing were treated to a cruise through the mountains and a long description of the many golf courses available in the Brisbane metro area. It was raining, though, and it looks like more of the same is on the way.