Halong Bay

I guess traveling is a bit like fishing. To catch the best experiences you have to be prepared to wait. They’re not just going to jump into your boat, or onto the bank of the river. Which means you have to put your rod out there, choose the right bait, bring an umbrella in case it rains and a jam sandwich or two for when you get hungry. Tourism can be like a seafood restaurant, with all the possibilities on a menu. The problem is you want to try them all, you feel bad when you miss one thing and then or you’ve eaten so much you end up feeling sick. Or the restaurant is so popular its become like a school canteen. Halong Bay: the tourism equivalent of a nightmarish school canteen. I’ve wanted to go there ever since I was last in Vietnam. I arrived in Hanoi early in the morning, got my Vietnamese Dong on the black market and then mixed up the exchange rate when paying for a Chinese chess set. Took a moped through town, rucksack and all to a nice little hostel and here, looking at beautiful pictures of the white islands of Halong I thought I would arrange a trip there. In fact I had wanted to head onwards towards Ho Chi Minh as soon as possible but I had arrived on the day before Liberation Day, the anniversary of the Vietnamese driving the Americans out of Saigon. Because this year it falls on a Thursday, with International Labour Day (May 1) the day afterwards and then a weekend after that it is effectively a four day holiday and many were taking the chance to go and see family, something they would normally do during the Tet holiday earlier in the year. The upshot of this is that there are no tickets at all on the trains traveling South for the next three days. So, in the hostel, looking at pictures of red sunsets and red sails only a few hours drive away I thought I would be mad to miss it.

Mad, indeed. Halong Bay City, in the morning. Our guide goes off to find us passes for being inside the national park. Admirable though it is to have set up a system for controlling the entry of tourists into an area of outstanding natural beauty, I begin to question whether the motives were entirely motivated by a love of nature as I make my way down the jetty. 600 tourist junks operate out of this harbour, 300 are large junks with sleeping quarters for up to 60 people. The smog is worse than the centre of Hanoi in rush hour, the engines on these hulking beasts have one smoky finger stuck up permanently at the atmosphere. These junks then process between the small number of spots permitted for tourist use by the Vietnamese government, another piece of legislation that might be admirable, were it for the greed that led these few spots to be populated daily the huge numbers from this filthy flottilla. We narrowly escape the parking crush by the Marvellous Cave. Is this as bad as it gets? I ask our guide. This is the low season, he replies with a smile forced on top of ruefulness. He knows its wrong but knows he has to smile to get the money he needs. We stop for the night and jump off the boat. On my last jump I unfortunately land on a jelly fish. Luckily for me its a direct hit, right on the dome, feet first and I don't get very badly stung.

At night we catch cuttlefish by the light of a powerful lamp. This is not really very traditional fishing either. I accidentally hook a jellyfish, probably not the one I landed on earlier. In the main dining room the crew are drinking some sort of firewater and eating sour apples. "We don't usually drink this much, but as your here..." Is probably what they're saying in Vietnamese. What they are definitely saying is "tram phan tram" which means "100%", meaning you're expected to drain your glass and also "Chuc suc khoe" which is "to your health". There is never any irony in the latter, even as I hear my liver drawing up a complaint to lodge with my health in the near future.

In the morning I wake up to see sunrise but its a dull grey. I go swimming again, try to get away from all the boats. I reach a large island with the tide rushing through an arch at its base. Some men are fishing here. I start to head back. A woman in a rowing boat, one of the floating stores that ply the junks with a wide range of over priced goods, comes round one of the small islands. She offers to tow me back, saying that the guide is worried about me. I say I'll be fine. I realise that the bubbles my strokes make are topped by the rainbow film of oil, I must have a good shower when I get back. On the way home the school canteen analogy really hits home. Actually, its more like the waste bucket at the school canteen on a day when the the dinner ladies decide to do something experimental with the left-overs and diesel. What it is not like is fishing.