A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
It's very difficult to describe in words the natural wonder that is Halong Bay. The Vietnamese legend is that the area was created by an enormous dragon fleeing from the mountains and gouging crevasses and channels with his flailing tail, which were later filled in by seawater. In fact, there is a complicated geological reason for the existence of these limestone islands, but I can't remember exactly what it is and these computers are so slow that I don't want to do the research. So if you're interested, Look it Up, as my mom used to say. Here's a sample of what it looks like:
Halong Bay.

The area, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, includes more than three thousand dramatic stone mountains jutting, in many cases, straight up out of the sea. Some just look like giant rocks with a bit of greenery attached, while others are sizable islands with lovely grottoes and hidden inlets and bays. Travelers reach the area by boat, and spend a couple days snaking between the islands, visiting stalactite-filled caves large and small, and various villages, both floating and land-based.

Heike and I went on a three-day tour with 8 other travelers, one guide and 3 crew, on a big wooden boat with cabins down below for us to sleep in the first night. The whole trip was fabulous -- great people, absolutely gorgeous scenery, and since we didn't go for the cheapest tour around, the food was great and everything was well-organized. I've learned to really appreciate this -- you do get what you pay for.

Day One of our trip called for swimming, but as it was sprinkling on and off, we were thankfully relieved of the misery of all sitting around at anchor waiting for someone to give in and go swimming. Instead we hiked up to the top of one of the islands -- 425 steps, a little practice run for the big trek on Day Two. Though since it had stairs, wasn't slippery, and only took 15 minutes to summit I guess it wasn't really much of a practice run after all. At any rate, we were rain-free for most of the hike and the view truly was lovely from the top, with hundreds of misty green islands visible. It's really a challenge to find a bad view in Halong Bay.

Our next stop was Hang Sung Sot, or "Amazing Cave". Now, I'm not a big fan of caves in general, as Heike will attest. Many of them, in my experience, are rather creepy, wet, and have a lamentable tendency toward bats, weird birds, and their respective bodily excretions. This cave, however, discovered in 1902 by a Frenchman, was huge, dry, and thanks to Chinese investors, paved with stone. It was a stunning cave, actually, featuring huge caverns with bizarre stalactites and stalagmites and a white scallopped roof made smooth and clean by wave action over the centuries. As blatant evidence that humans have no respect for nature, many surfaces within the caves bear grafitti, most of it from Frenchmen between 1902 and the 1940's. Idiots.

On Day Two we meandered through the islands to a weird peninsula of Cat Ba Island, the largest island in Halong Bay and the site of a National Park. We walked an hour through the forest, hills and rice paddies on a surprisingly well-paved road. In fact, they were extending the road as we walked, in order to provide a viable motorbike route to the cove/boat station during the rainy season. In my inimitable way, I managed to step in wet cement, forever commemorating my trip to Cat Ba. The walk was gorgeous, as usual, and we ended up in the small puppy-infested village of Viet Hai, population 206. They grow rice in this beautiful mountain valley, and the advent of adventure tour groups has substantially altered their subsistence economy. Traditional mud, straw, bamboo and thatch huts are making way for the usual brick and concrete soulless boxes so prevalent throughout rural Vietnam. Progress? Hard to say. Their lives are less dependent on the weather or the rice crop, and their children are better educated, but certainly the rhythm and serenity of their previous lives will disappear. Knowing the Vietnamese, they probably consider it a fair bargain.

The next bit of the trek was something of a personal nightmare. As mentioned earlier, my utter gracelessness is a real hindrance when climbing anything, and my lack of physical conditioning exacerbates the problem. As a result, I trailed the rest of the group on our muddy vertical scramble. It didn't help matters that I was wearing Tevas rather than hiking shoes. It made sense to me at the time -- I had just worn my real shoes for the first time in five month on our day in Hanoi and managed to get blisters on both feet. Now that I've actually experienced a hike in Tevas, however, I'm putting a new pair of hiking shoes on my Hanoi shopping list.

The problem was that it had been raining for days, though it was clear the day we hiked. The mountain we were climbing, Soldier Hill, was 260 meters high and most of the trail was at a very steep angle, full of rocks and roots. Those were a godsend, actually, since it was so damned muddy that they were the only traction to be had.

So the way up was steep and difficult, and I heaved and rested frequently but made it up eventually. Rest, photo op, watermelon, half a bottle of water, then back to the mud, downhill this time.

It was instantly clear that the Tevas were wholly inadequate footwear for the descent, particularly when located on the feet of a complete klutz. And I wasn't the only one who notice my utter flailing ineptitude. I was soon the object of concern of not one but both our guides who, humiliating enough, were scampering over the rocks and roots like bunnies, while wearing plastic slip-on shower shoes. We proceeded to pick our way down the slippery path, screeching from one near disaster to another. And while I never completely fell in the mud, I experienced approximately 73 near misses involving flailing arms, sudden grabs for trees and rocks, or a strategically placed guide blocking my plummeting forward descent and/or precipitous backward slide. At least it wasn't as tiring going down, though it was considerably more painful in terms of twisted knees, scraped hands and my poor overworked arm muscles, which were sore for two days from hanging onto trees all the way down.

After the hike back to the boat and some refreshing (read: cold) swimming, we spent the night in Cat Ba, a fishing town whose land-based services appeared to consist entirely of hotels, restaurants and karaoke bars. After more cruising and another roll of film down the drain, we headed back to Hanoi.

Next stop: Sapa.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren



posted by Katy at 5:34 PM