Ha Long

Everyone I spoke to about travelling through Vietnam's north has told me I simply must see Ha Long Bay, and that there is no better way to see it then cruising on a traditional Junk. The bay is excuisite, and absolutely picturesque.

So we headed to Ha Long, looking forward to seeing this unspoilt place with it's crystal bays and majestic caves and islands. We headed to the dock by bus, our small group of eight, and were seated in a silver service dining boat set for at least sixty people. The fresh local seafood was spectacular, with stuffed baked crab being followed by fresh prawns, fish and chips, and coure after course of exceptional food in even more exceptional surrounds.

Following our lavish lunch we retired to the roof to lounge in the sun and watch the bay pass us by. The photograph below is not out boat, nor is tit taken by anyone I know. I pulled it from Flickr because all the boats on Ha Long bay are exactly the same and there's hundreds of them, all with rich whitey tourists eating much the same fancy fare and all on their way to see the allegedly heritage listed cave.



I was incredibly excited about seeing the cave. I love caves. I love rocks. It was really my thing.

Anyhow, it turns out the cave has in fact been developed into quite an attraction. There is a series of concrete paths, all made of plaster and designed to look like natual cave features, and dripping water designed to simulate the natural formation of speleotherms in caves (it was somewhat let down by the speed of the water flowing and the fact that you could hear the pump). Another fountain was quite simply just a four foot Lake-Burley-Griffin styly fountain, completely out of place except that it fit with the coloured lights that adorned every section and cave feature. Perhaps I'm being cynical, but when I look at the 'cave wall' and see powerpoints or an electrical distribution box I kind of feel there's something a little sad going on. It pains me to see a site that should be so sacred being decimated for the sake of garishness.

Following this we headed to a traditional floating Ha Long Bay fishing village (which I suspect is largely subsistant on tourist income), hired kiaks and paddled through natural cave systems without plaster, concrete or glitry light in sight. It wa great fun and this went some way to clearing my Ha Long cave-related dissapointment.

Interestingly, Vietnamese boat captains subscribe to a similar chaos based traffic system. The massive number of tourist boats all heading to the same placed makes for significant amounts of traffic. Just as we were marveling at how they pass between each other and never crash, our bow passed beneath the stern of another Junk. It caught a taught rope and bent our mast over to about 40 degrees from vertical, nearly snapping it right off, before the bow of the other Junk gave way, tearing the ornate timber from the ship. Our driver took off without so much as a second look and we headed back to Ha Long town.

The town itself was designed exclusively for tourists. One side of the main road is lined with hotels, while the other is lined with retaurants, souvenier shops and bars. We hit up all three and the latter was the best (both a foos ball table and a rat pushing it into the lead).