January 10, 2017

January 10, 2017

This morning our group is on the move.  On board the bus, we drive four hours east to the coast.  Along the way we make a stop at a truck stop with an attached store selling crafts of Vietnam.  It is extensive and even has huge sculptures.  They also have a dozen women doing needlepoint artwork.

At the coast we stopped at a cultured pearl farm. Several ladies demonstrate the art of seeding oysters.  It looked like dentistry for mollusks.  Back in the water, the oyster begins secreting mother-of-pearl around the seed.  Another lady opened up mature oysters to show the pearls formed.  Of course the whole motivation of the demonstration was to sell us pearls from the store.

Afterwards we drove to the pier and tendered onto a boat for an overnight cruise on Halong Bay. We luck out and our small group has the whole boat to ourselves. Our cabin is wonderful, better than we’ve had on fancy ships at home.

Halong Bay, a World Heritage Site, is famous for its Karst rock formations. The bay is dotted with a thousand limestone monoliths. Over the eons, acidic rainwater seeping through cracks formed caverns whose roofs eventually eroded away leaving this startling landscape.  It is magnificent.  Our only disappointment is the weather.  It is foggy and gray.  We could use some Arizona sun!

Apparently Halong Bay is not a secret.  We are shocked at the number of cruise boats who accompanied us as we motored our way through the tiny passages between the islands.  The landscape is hard to capture in a photo.  To improve the perspective, we stopped at Titov Island, where we climbed 465 steps to the peak for a bird’s eye view of the scenery.

The bounty of the bay has been harvested traditionally by floating villages.  Three still survive. We stopped at Cua Van to see one. This community of Vietnamese live on the water atop floating docks and boats tethered together.  It must be a tough isolated existence. Almost everything they need has to be brought to them.  An older lady resident rows six of us around the sheltered area so we can get a closer look. They just happened to be getting a visit from the corner grocery store, a tiny boat loaded to the gills with odds and ends.

Afterwards our ship drops anchor for the night. We can see the lights of a handful of other boats around us. Just before dinner, the chef gave a demo on food carving. It was divine.  It is amazing the art that can be created from simple fruits and vegetables.

Dinner was a buffet of seafood, including huge prawns, fried calamari, steamed fish, stuffed crabs along with delicious salads and spring rolls.