All Aboard!

A very early morning flight on the impressive airline VietJet, we arrived early in Hai Phuong on Vietnam’s north-eastern coast to catch a surprisingly quicker transfer (as we opted to not stop at the gift shop on the way) than promised to Ha Long Bay. 

Ha Long Bay – meaning “descending dragon” – is a UNESCO Heritage site and in 2012 was named one of the 7 New Natural Wonders of the World.  The Bay features almost 2,000 limestone karsts and isles in all different shapes and sizes.    The limestone in the Bay has experienced 500 million years of formation and the karsts have taken 20 million years under the impact of the tropical wet climate. Local legend says that the gods sent dragons to protect Vietnam from invaders, and these dragons spat pure jade, which landed in the water to form the karst islands. The dragons found the area so beautiful they decided to remain there, forever protecting Vietnam from invaders.

We boarded our boat, Bhaya Classic 3, along with 38 other passengers, all of us eager for a unique way to celebrate Christmas.  After an onboard safety briefing, we settled into lunch to realize that we were certainly not alone in this idea - 600 other tour boats also launched off into the Bay that day.  And every day of the year. At the same time.

Apparently the government controls when and where the boats will go, and in typical bureaucratic fashion the idea of staggering the departures seems to have not been considered. With overcrowded Hoi An and now Ha Long Bay, we were starting to wonder if Vietnam had become simply too discovered…

We arrived at our first stop, Cua Van, one of the Bays’ traditional floating fishing villages.   This community housed approximately 100 families who live full-time on boats and floating wooden houses.  The communities have shrunk over the past 50 years as the government has worked to relocate the community members to nearby towns in order to better support them with education and other basic necessities.  Nonetheless, those who remain in the villages, support themselves by fishing (both out on the water and via fish farming) and are said to have become more wealthy than their land-resident neighbours because of the extensive tourism dollars they now generate. 

Their houses are small with the most basic of amenities and most residents seem to spend the majority of their day outside of it, either undertaking fishing-related or tourism tasks.  Almost all houses, however, have dogs that stay near the home, most likely to act as guards when the men go out to fish and the women row the tourists around the village (with their feet!) in their rowboats.  As farm fishing can take a year to harvest the fish, we learned, thieves have been known to come and cut the nets and steal the fish – and a barking dog is an effective deterrent.

To celebrate Christmas, the boat crew organized a party for all of us.  And we found ourselves totally caught up in the accompanying childhood games.  Perhaps it was the gluhwein or just the Christmas Eve spirit, but musical chairs was addictively fun and incredibly competitive.  Geoff bowed out after a tumble with a fellow boater (totally not his fault to be clear) but Beth went on to win the title…and the accompanying bottle of wine.  She declined a rematch the next evening.

Although we (and all of our shipmates) missed the boat’s 6am Tai Chi session, we awoke early the next day to head out to some more remote parts of the Bay.  Too cold to swim, we instead kayaked and had a fabulous morning checking out the limestone formations, the small temples on deserted islands, and hidden beaches, while also watching quietly a smaller fishing village community go about their day.  They checked the nets, repaired a boat, sat with friends for lunch, all while children played boat games with rocks in the water.  After a day of sailing, it felt we were seeing real life.

A short and too-touristy visit to a local pearl farm will likely not stay long in our memories save for the cringe-worthy realization of how they actually harvest pearls.  They first open the oyster shell, pull out its membrane and then reinsert a piece of that membrane along with a mother of pearl ball into an oyster’s ovaries or gonads before setting it back into the water to harvest for the next 3-8 years. I think every man walked a little bit differently that afternoon after the tour.

Nonetheless, as we sat on the deck as our day boat made its way back to our main boat, the sun finally shone brightly and warmly, and the quiet and stunning sites of the spectacular Ha Long Bay were a true Christmas gift to be sure.