The Road Warriors: Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island

I awoke to the chirp of my new alarm clock. It was time to go. A minibus waited for me at the travel agency and they crammed me in with of bunch of other tourists like it was Tetris. I reckon I was the tall skinny piece. I sat in between two people who more closely resembled the square piece. No empty space on that minibus. And I hate minibuses. They're really just minivans except with no air-conditioning, uncomfortable seats, no legroom and lots of hot breath. Used exclusively for tourists.

I met a spunky guy on the drive up to Ha Long Bay who spent four years on Dubai. What an insane sounding city. Money in large quantities has shaped it into a creature like no other. Cosmopolitan, yet mitigated by the fundamentalism that comes with the territory.

A rest stop came and went, and before long, we rolled into the pier. Passports were collected. I didn't have mine because it was off in HCMC getting a Chinese visa, so I was given a Vietnamese pseudonym. Then we waited. Oh, waiting. I never truly knew you until Ha Long Bay. It was an hour of milling about, making small talk with people I'd never meet again and fighting off touts. Who knows what was happening with our passports at the ticket office. For all we knew, we were being auctioned off the different skippers.

I was tugged out of the group specifically and handed a ticket. Completely arbitrarily. I booked a 3-day, 2-night trip while some of the others booked shorter tours. Also, I believe there were different classes of accommodation. Perhaps I was the only one who booked the longest, cheapest tour. That didn't seem likely. Anyways, I was tossed onto the boat with a bunch of new people and we set off into the sunny sea.

The boat was a typical three story live aboard. Cabins, restaurant, sundeck. It had a very classic air about it, but was a far cry from the beautiful, red-sailed junks in the tourist brochures.

I shared lunch with a guy named Gavin who was a musician working in Shanghai, and a Korean Air employee named "Lee" (although I assume his Korean name is different), who was taking his mom on a vacation. The boat maneuvered around the congestion of the pier and out into open waters. In the distance we could see the famed limestone cliffs poking skyward from the horizon. Gavin and I finished lunch quickly and hopped onto the sundeck for a better view. The weather was clear and warm. Up above I met a few more travelers. I concluded early that it was a good group, and it wasn't long before everyone felt comfortable with one another.

We approached the first huge formation which also happened to be the first attraction of the tour; a magnificent limestone cave. Because, I guess, normal limestone caves are boring, they decided to augment this one with multi-coloured floodlights. Purdy, yes, but it felt artificial. And kind of like Christmas decorations. On the way out, perhaps to cheapen the environment further, they were playing honest to god selections from Sister Act 2 over the PA system.

The boat set out further from the shore, away from the chartered fleet and day trippers. Things got more peaceful, and the seascape started getting very interesting. Drifting between two dramatic spires, we entered a floating fishing village. Yes, like Waterworld, everything was on rafts. That included houses and shops.

A motorboat chugged up and brought a handful of us through a cave and out into a swimming area completely encircled by a wall of towering limestone. I forgot my bathing suit, but jumped in regardless. The water was beautiful, warm and clear. The cliffs shot up, almost 200 meters, on all sides. These perfectly tailors experiences are the upside to doing group tours. My peripheral vision was 100% limestone and water; impossible to capture that kind of majesty on film.

On the boat again, we sailed even further into the speckled sea. Anytime I thought that the scenery could not get any more dramatic, it did. The islands, numbering in the hundreds, were all uninhabited and draped in foliage. They shot straight up out of the water, sheer cliff on all sides, completely impractical, even if someone did want to settle on one. I did spot one with a shrine built on top, which brought up all kinds of questions. Soon, we dropped anchor at another floating village. This one even had a bank, no word of a lie. We paddled around in kayaks for a bit.

The boat sailed north a few kilometers before dropping anchor for the night. It was about 6:30 and everyone jumped into the water to work up an appetite before dinner. The sun was setting, casting a dramatic orange light over the surface of the water. It was still as warm as we could possibly hope for it to be. Some, myself included, dove off of the sundeck into the water. Best moment in Vietnam.

After dinner and after the sunset, a group of us conversed on the sundeck until past 11. I met two girls from Quebec, Arianne and Andreanne, who were also doing the three-day trip. All the others, I had learned, were heading back to the shore the next day. The lights from the distant fishing boats illuminated the faint outlines of our surroundings. It was the kind of night you could stay up forever enjoying.

I was sharing a two-bed cabin with Gavin. A bathroom was attached, and fans were thoughtfully provided as it got quite hot down close to the engine room. Unfortunately the power cut out in the middle of the night and the room heated up like a Easy Bake Oven. Gavin shot up at one point and said "I can't deal with this", then stole away out the door and into the night. I opened a window and fell back asleep. I was awoken again by a hard blast of water to the face and the sound of hard rain pummeling the boat. Gavin came tearing back in as I was closing the window. Somehow I fell back asleep again.

Once more I awoke, this time to a deafening howl. Like, deafening. Gavin and I both flew out of bed and covered our ears in a panic. The sound kept on. "What the hell is that and why isn't it stopping?!" I exclaimed. It eventually did, and we deduced it was the horn. Some jackass member of the crew might have pushed it on a dare. Our cabin was right beside it. I went back to sleep knowing full well that there was a good chance I would be woken back up again. But I wasn't.

The next morning, the chatter around the breakfast table centered mainly on the horn blast. Every time someone new would come in and sit down, they would inevitably ask "Hey did you guys hear that horn last night?" "Of course we did!"

After breakfast, another boat arrived to pluck the three-day trippers while the rest sailed back to shore. Myself, Arianne, Andreanne and a large German guy whose name I forgot, switched boats and bid the others farewell. This new boat was called the "Ha Long Party Cruiser", almost identical to the last boat, save for the addition of a flatscreen TV, some speakers, a PA system and some mildly depressing decals that would suggest "party" (a rock guitar, some music notes, a martini glass, you get the idea). I went up on the sundeck. It would be a few more hours of sailing until we reached our destination, Cat Ba Island, the largest and only inhabited island in the bay, so I fell asleep.

I awoke to chatter. Chatter about me. People were wondering who the sleeping man was and how the hell he got on the boat. They must have been sleeping during the exchange. The sundeck was now full of people, some of who I recognized from the ride up, such as my Dubai friend. Pretty soon we arrived at Cat Ba Island.

A flat, man-made strip of road greeted the boat. We were transferred onto a bus after 45 minutes of hard, unadulterated waiting. The bus carved around the limestone peaks on the island, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending. Flatlands occasionally appeared in between cliffs. There was overcast that day, and it was a little damp. Somehow it made the island seem a little more mysterious. Muted greens were everywhere. One could find themselves shipwrecked here; collecting dew to drink. Out towards the sea, there was nothing to see, only fog and jagged limestone. Like if you sailed away from Cat Ba Island, you would be mysteriously led right back to it again. For all I knew, while we were sleeping, we crossed into a void. Cat Ba floated in it's midst. Everything else ceased to exist.

The bus stopped at an entrance to a national park. The was a hike that led up to the highest peak on Cat Ba. I threw on my boots and joined Arianne, Andreanne and the German (who will be henceforth referred to as 'Fritz') on a hike to the top. Our new guide was named Tony, and he was a bit of a Hitler. He had given us 45 minutes to go up and then come back down again, and he seemed genuine in his threat of the bus leaving people behind.

We sauntered up the mountain, through mud and over sharp, jutting rocks. Fritz, perhaps keen on impressing the girls, blasted up the mountain in an awkward display of strength and virility. Soon after, we would come across his hulking frame, keeled over in a state of extreme exhaustion on the side of the trail, and eventually pass him. Things got tighter and steeper as we approached the summit, until finally we had arrived. A lookout tower was the last thing to climb and it provided a breathtaking 360 degree view of the impossible landscape. Before long, we had to head back. The descent was arguably worse, with bumps, scrapes and falls happening with frequency. We got back just in time.

I was disgusting. Glazed with sweat and caked with mud. Tony's threat was completely empty, as we had to wait no less than an hour for the bus to arrive and take us to Cat Ba Town. It wasn't even that big an island so I had no idea what took so long. The town, aside from being in glorious isolation, for the most part resembled any other town in Vietnam. A main street went along the shoreline while a few others tangled around some cliffs. All were lined with houses and shops. Apartment buildings seemed to lean back onto cliffsides, facing the ocean with a casual cool. The fog and the gloom swallowed boats out to sea.

They hauled everyone out at a hotel and another guy showed up with a sack full of keys. Doubles and group rooms were given out first until it was just the singles left. Fritz nabbed his own room while Tony tried to pawn one room off on the three of us remaining. It was me, a Chilean girl and a large, hairy Frenchman. I would have had to share a bed with the Frenchman. No way that was happening, so I mustered up all the indignant rage I could and butted heads with Tony until he conceded to giving me my own room. The squeaky wheel got the grease.

And man, was it ever some nice grease! My room must have been the bridal suite or something! Huge bed, air con, TV, phone, towels and linens, fridge, hot water. I felt like I didn't deserve it, but the thought of awkwardly taking turns showering and changing in a small room then sharing a bed with a burly stranger quickly convinced my conscience otherwise.

Tony had allotted three hours for free time before we had to meet again, so I cleaned up and watched a bit of the Dark Knight on TV. Then I walked about town. It certainly was busy, or at least it seemed that way with the amount of car horns honking. In about 40 minutes, I had circled and seen the whole town. Not much to report.

Dinner was typical bland tour food. The World Cup had just started, so after the last plate was cleared, the TV was switched on and people started buying drinks. South Africa vs Mexico. I sat with the Quebec girls and watched. There was something comforting about the World Cup. Like a tiny sliver of the outside world being piped into this strange dreamland. After the game, the girls left and I joined another group for some cards. Before long, it was time to sleep, and boy did I ever need it.

Early the next morning, few people talked. It was hazy again. Perhaps it was the same day repeated. That's how it works in the void maybe. Nonetheless, we were leaving and the real world would greet us soon enough.

On the bus I started a new book. Dance Dance Dance, another Murakami. In the time it took to do the previous days' travels in reverse, I had a quarter of it finished. Themes of isolation and sober modern life.

I did finally get to see a red-sailed junk. However, this one more closely resembled a typical "party cruiser" with some tiny sails strapped to a bulky frame. "Oriental Sails" they read. "Ornamental Sails" would have been more appropriate.

Back at the harbour we waited. Oh god, the waiting. It was endless, all for a bus that took us a few kilometers up the road for lunch in Ha Long City. Before long, we were off again, this time back to Hanoi. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but couldn't wait for this choking regiment to end. Soon I would be back in the hurried clatter of what had become the real world to me. Hanoi, and my path up to China. Halfway through the ride the sun finally made an appearance.