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Floating Villages
After a 24year hiatus,
Judyth
Gregory-Smith
and her family venture
back toVietnamto soak up the beauty
of HalongBay.
I
had not visited Vietnam since 1992. Unsurprisingly I saw great
changes, particularly in the capital, Hanoi. Now there are skyscrap-
ers. The traffic has changed too: in the 1990’s there were few
vehicles other than bicycles. The women rode upright like Mary
Poppins. Stately, they pedaled along – most wearing the traditional
long dress and conical hat. Now there are 6,000.000 or more people
riding 1,000,000 or more motorbikes in the capital and helmets have
replaced the conical hats. But in rural areas, on our bus drive to Halong
Bay, east of the capital, I saw women riding their bicycles primly and
unhurriedly in the pleasant old-fashioned way.
Agent Orange
Halong Bay is a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site encompassing 1,500 square
kilometers of quiet water. It is dotted with more than 3,000 mostly
uninhabited islands of limestone thrusting upwards in sheer-sided cliffs
where forests cling on, sometimes right down to the water. On the four-
hour bus journey we were entertained and informed by our guide, Anh.
“Just call me Handsome for short!” he quipped. “And, if you have any
questions, just ask me.” After a couple of hours on the bus, we stopped for
coffee and to view handicraft made by disabled people. Anh told us that
in the American War, they dropped a chemical called Agent Orange. The
disastrous effects of this chemical have lasted more than fifty years and,
over many generations, have maimed
the people whose handicraft we were
about to see. There were several huge
workshops each filled with top-quality
lacquer ware, basketry, paintings and
painstaking embroidery. We admired
the artistry of the people and could
hardly believe our eyes when we saw
the cashier skillfully manipulate a
calculator: he had no hands.
At Halong Bay, we watched as
wooden junks of all shapes and sizes
rode at anchor or sailed serenely across
the broad expanse of calm water. Yes,
there were plenty of tourists, but they
were spread among the dozen or two
junks and it was quiet, very quiet,
most of the time. Two of the junks had
their sails up, evoking in me wistful
thoughts of an earlier age. “Most boats
don’t sail with their sails up, because
one fell over and people drowned,”
said my young son Cameron, putting
a damper on my romantic notions.
We boarded and climbed the stairs to
our cabin. Immediately, elder brother
Cooper saw the emergency equipment.
“If we have to break down the door to
get out, can I do it?” he asked eagerly,
ready to take the hammer off the wall
in a second.
Protected beauty
Before disaster struck, I felt it was time
to explore the junk. There were cabins
on the first floor and the dining room
on the second. The top deck was part
open where passengers could work on
their suntan and part covered where
they could read or write. We reached
Titop Island safely - doubtless because
we had not unfurled the sails. Then
I left the family and set off to climb
hundreds of steps to the temple that
crowns Titop. I halted several times to
Halong Bay is a UNESCO
World Heritage Site
encompassing 1,500 square
kilometers of quiet water