Halong Bay Cruise, 2: Oh Hear Us When We Cry To Thee For Those In Peril Upon The Sea

Our second day at sea dawned clear and bright and smooth, full of happy portent. After the 37 course Vietnamese tourist breakfast, our ship was underway, headed for Bai Tu Long Bay, so our contract said; but probably not. About 10 AM, the engine went dead, we coasted to a stop, all was still, the anchor was dropped, and Dragon's Pearl 2 twisted in the wind, and tide; for the rest of the day. Our guide disappeared, apparently hiding in his cabin. Questioning the crew, we learned that the propeller had fallen off the shaft (or so we interpreted "propeller problem") and that we were dead in the water. Corporate headquarters had been alerted and was sending an engineer. The talk among passengers might have turned ugly, to matters of refund, breach of contract, pain and suffering, rescue, etc., but Vicki, ever the optimist, began singing the Gilligan's Island ballad, and other passengers, mostly the Americans, joined in. "A three-day tour!" Such a good-humored lot. There's a song for everything, Vicki claims. How about mutiny? I ask. Eventually, the guide reappeared, confirmed what we earlier had surmised, but announced, hey, no problem, our crew has found another island and beach, nearby, so we'll just take the lighter (tender?), kayak some more, and have the promised beach barbecue there. No problem. Also no propulsion. Also no Bai Tu Long Bay. Whatever.

Clear, bright, smooth, etc., as we make our way through the morning scenery

Commie listening post, cleverly disguised as a fisherman's temple

So here we are in the lighter, headed toward the island and beach where we'll have
the BBQ

But first, more kayaking fun; no pix because Vicki and I actually joined in the
fun, stepping carefully down from the lighter down into the 2-up kayak; we
made for the island in the middle there, actually passing through the arch, then
left, behind the three islands, and finally to the beach; zig-zagging all the way,
as we normally do in canoes and kayaks (to evade enemy torpedoes, I explain)

That arch; pretty exciting actually

Meanwhile back ashore, the crew is setting up and fixing the BBQ; that's the
chef, sporting his Viet Cong pith helmet (can be purchased at tourist trinket
shoppes throughout Vietnam) 

Many courses, mostly protein

Luncheon setting; we sat in the chairs farthest right, since I had determined
that the tide was coming in 

The beach; note that it is backed up by sheer cliffs; increasing concern about the
incoming tide; also increasing concern because Dragon's Pearl 2 is no longer
in view; perhaps the anchor is dragging...

Sea snails in a tidal pool; at least we won't starve...those of us who can evade
the incoming tide by scaling the cliffs

A low-tide cave under the cliff; shade was welcome

Us, there; this is the only picture of us on the cruise; still waiting to hear from the
guy from Virginia who took lots of pix of us kayaking

Dragon's Pearl was still there, twisting in the wind; the engineer had come and
gone and was to return after midnight with a SCUBA diver to undertake the
needed repairs

As far as we got that day

Back aboard, fellow passengers taking her easy

At length, the cruise company sent out a larger lighter (tender?) to tow us back to
the previous night's anchorage

"We can 't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane,
if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,"
said the Commander. "Rev her up to 8,500! We're
going through!"  The pounding of the cylinders
increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The crew
looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get
us through," they said to one another.

Back to reality

At least the scenery was nice

We made it to the anchorage

As before

After dinner, it was crew entertainment night

The highlight of which, for me, was the food carving by
the chef: the ship, doves, and a dragon, all done in fruit and
veggies...very impressive

He also played this 2-string traditional instrument

And the bartender entertained us with the bamboo flute; such a day!

Halong Bay Cruise, 1

Perhaps our chief interest in visiting Vietnam was seeing the great karst pinnacles in Halong and Bai Tu Long bays, some of the greatest concentrations of these structures in the world. We have always enjoyed visiting mountainous areas and became of aware of karsts, both on land and sea, as early as 1983, after a visit to Japan. In 2008, we did the River Li cruise in China, seeing the great land accretion of them between Guilin and Yangshou, and we have seen plenty more in our retirement travels. There's a lot of limestone in the world, eroding away into towers, mountains, caves and sinkholes and a variety of other curiosities, but nowhere as numerous or scenic as these two bays off of northern Vietnam.

Halong Bay is by far the more popular of the cruises, which can take 1-3 days. Some 600 ships are licensed to operate in Halong Bay. Bai Tu Long Bay is very similar in terms of scenery, but further from Ha Long, and only 30 ships are licensed to tour it. We opted for the 3 day Bai Tu Long Bay cruise but--it's a long story I'll be unfolding here (cue the "three hour tour" music)--we actually saw Halong Bay.

On board our ship, the Dragon's Pearl 2, a diesel-powered junk, were 7 other couples, US, British, and Australian, a US family of four, and a single architecture grad student from Sydney. All very nice, friendly, and good-humored people. Amusingly, one of the passengers was a retired merchant ship's captain and another a retired diesel engineer. But I'm getting ahead of the story. The crew numbered about 7, all Vietnamese, of whom the guide, a steward, and the bartender spoke some English. A good combination, I thought.

We boarded and occupied our cabins in the early afternoon as the ship set forth into Halong Bay and a roadstead there that the cruise company, Indochina Junk, uses as an overnight anchorage.

Our luxury van dropped us off at a luxury hotel right on the harbor; luxuriously

Boarding the lighter (tender?) to take us to...

Dragon's Pearl 2

Our cabin, spartan but en suite; starboard, stern; not luxurious

And we're off; even from the harbor you can see plenty of the landscape we wanted
to see

Still pretty near the harbor; all this is in the Gulf of Tonkin, South China Sea;
calm like a lake for our three days

Dragon Pearl 2's figurehead

It was a bit hazy our first day out

Incipient arch

So after the usual safety talk, cruise talk, etc., the cook came up to give us a
lesson in Vietnamese cooking; pork spring rolls, which became our afternoon
snack

Though the sea was calm, you could see the tides are in the 8-10' range

Caves everywhere

Once we got to the roadstead, it was play-time; for the younger passengers; Vicki
and I would kayak the next day

Roadstead, with some of the bigger junks

Interim Update From Middle California

We're back in the States, hunkered down in our camper for a while. I can't disclose the location except to say the aroma of garlic growing in the fields nearby is very strong. We cut our southeast Asia trip a few weeks short--only Ho Chi Minh City was left among places we had not already visited--and, despite the outbreak of the virus in the US, we felt that the prospects for health care, should we need it, were better here than in Vietnam...or Laos or Cambodia. Vietnam, FWIW, had 16 cases, stemming from January, all recovered now. Sadly, the lack of tourism is really going to hurt the economies of the region, but that will be true nearly everywhere. In any case, we're here, recovering from jet lag (from Singapore it was a 14 hour flight), with plenty of time to get back to the blog. Now go wash your hands....

Sex And Violence At The Water Puppet Show*

Our next stop on the luxury trip to Ha Long and our cruise was in a village way off the freeway, Yen Duc, expressly built, I surmise, to feed and entertain luxury cruise travelers such as ourselves.

According to the Dung Dynasty scholar Quang Phuc Dong,** water puppetry began in the 11th century as something to do while the rice was growing. Almost certainly it is related to the monsoon. The stage typically is a pond built for theatrical purposes. Four or as many as eight puppeteers are concealed in a building at the head of the pond, manipulating the wooden/lacquered puppets through their motions by way of bamboo poles. The performance is accompanied by music (piped in, very loud), a chorus (similar to classical Greek theater) that comments on the action and sometimes warns the puppets of impending threats. Typically, half a dozen stories are told, chiefly of traditional village life. I was particularly impressed by the dragons and their gyrations, so to speak, resulting in a baby dragon, and the farmer violently chasing a fox away from his ducks. Afterwards, we were served the first of many very large Vietnamese meals, many, many courses. And then we were back in our luxury vans for the final leg of our trip to Ha Long.

Yen Duc Water Puppet Theater

The chorus belting out their lip-sync introduction

Traditional farming sketch

Dragons doing what dragons must do

An egg rises to the surface

And, voila, a baby dragon

Farmer fends off fox attacking his ducks

Violently

Battered fox retreats

Life is good

The puppeteers; all in (Orvis?) waders probably manufactured not far from here

Our table

And we are on the road again

Now passing the huge Ha Long beach, freshly groomed and planted

Lest anyone think of Ha Long as a quaint fishing village and port...

Clearly, there are big plans for this place

*the title refers to the late great Peter Cook's "Memoirs of a Miner"

**apologies to the late great theoretical linguist James McCawley...