Halong Bay, continued

It's the following morning, made you wait overnight!  HA!  

Back to the bay: in the morning, after becoming quite proficient at the ancient art of tai chi, in fact almost becoming a Tai Chi Master after just 30 minutes, we had coffee and a pastry and got back in the small tender boat (not because it was easy to chew, mind you, but that's what you call the small boat that takes you somewhere off of the large boat/ship) and went to a floating fishing village.  That doesn't sound like much but the entire bay area is a World Heritage Site and part of the reason for that is because of a handful of these floating villages.  We arrived at a little dock and then transferred to small wooden boats that carried 4 people and one very small woman who rowed the boat, standing up.  Her arms were about as thin as the narrow handle of the oar, but she was strong.  She took us around the village. It consisted of about 90 houses, an elementary school and a "shop" where the villagers bought supplies.  About 300 people live in this one village, including lots of kids, dogs and cats.  They make their living by fishing and by culturing pearls, taking them back to the mainland to sell.  Everyone is proficient at rowing a boat, tossing the nets, fishing, repairing, doing laundry by hand, everything you would have to do to survive.

This particular village was built after the war, in the 1970's, with a government grant and grants from NGOs.  The houses are small and they are all attached together, floating on plastic pontoons.  It's amazing.  Yes, they are obviously pretty poor but there is great care taken at each place.  Kids are laughing, neighbors are chatting to each other, and it's all within an almost protected area surrounded by karsts.  We were paddled around for about an hour, all of us, after the first 15 minutes, silent and in awe of the beauty and the intense power of the place.

The Vietnam people have incredible reverence for their ancestors and for their country. The place, the bay and this village, are extensions of that reverence.  The power of it all, and I don't know how to describe it or how to translate the feeling into words, is obvious and moving. We were all silenced in the face of it.  We were rounding a corner of a karst and Giovanni, sitting next to me, whispered "I cannot believe this."  It was what we all felt.

This village and its inhabitants live day to day, hoping that they survive, expecting to but never sure.  Weather, market conditions, war, so many things could toss their lives upside down in a minute.  But they are connected to the world, they have cell phones and internet connection in their floating village, so they know what's happening around them.  To live in a place so quiet and isolated and peaceful must be, at times, a curse.  And then a blessing. And then a curse.  It goes both ways.

There is a blog post with some photos you can check out:   http://topofthephnom.blogspot.com/2013/01/go-floating-village-halong-bay-vietnam.html  because I can't download any photos until I get home.  She has some photos of the boat as well, on her Part 1 posting about Halong Bay.

It isn't that a sail like this will change your life, that's just too trite of a sentiment.  But it does make you pause and think, not about the villagers but about yourself. Actually this entire vacation is doing that because when else can you take the time to ruminate on your life other than when  you take yourself out of it?  Otherwise, the day-to-day gets in the way, bills to pay, laundry, kids, dogs, the stupid job, all that stuff, and there isn't time to stop.  Here there is time to stop, to put down the book, to step away from the electrical crap we drag around with us and just let your mind wander, let yourself think.  Quietly.

After the floating village and the short lesson on culturing pearls, we were tendered back to the Treasure Junk, had a breakfast consisting of a light pho, eggs any way, stir fried chicken and mushrooms, a meatball with tomatoes and an incredible salad of crisply shredded vegetables with peanuts and dried beef and we finished with the best pineapple I have ever eaten.  We were then shipped back to the dock and got back on the bus for the tiresome 4 hour trip back to Hanoi, broken up with a bathroom stop at a huge touristy shopping place which was actually OK.

And then a strange thing happened: a young woman on the bus was sick, her boyfriend asked if we could pull over for a minute, and the driver and guide did, right on the side of the road, next to three little connected businesses, rubble all around.  The girl and her boyfriend got off the bus and within about 15 feet she fainted dead away, her skin the color of bleached bone. Two of the shop keepers, young guys, rushed over, got her up and carried her to the back of one of the shops (which looked much too small to even have a back).  Our tour guide, a cool young guy, went a few doors away, got some ginger tea, came back and for 15 minutes we were all just waiting. Then the two guys come out from the back of the shop, laughing.  Our tour guide comes out, the boyfriend comes out, all laughing.  Then the girl comes out, smiling.  They say goodbye and come back to the bus.

It seems the young guys, including our tour guide, knew what to do, how to put ginger oil and camphor on her, how to rub her neck, temples, hands, feet, get the blood going, get her "life spirit" moving again.  She looked 90% better, was able to stay on the bus for the next 2.5 hours back to Hanoi.  That these guys all knew what to do was remarkable.  And the boyfriend, who was sitting across the aisle from me, said he offered to pay them something, and they just handed him a lit stick of incense, indicated that he should put it near the shrine.  He asked our tour guide why and the reason was "they just did what they knew, and your thanks needed to go to their ancestors, not them."  

Quite the journey, I must say.

Alright, it's time for a walk around the lake and a chance to partake in this hotel's breakfast service.  But I have much more to say.......