It was cloudy when we left last night. This morning it is cold and misty with a sprinkling of rain if you stand in the observation area at the bow (which nobody is doing).
We have an interesting group of fellow passengers, as always, coming from England, the Isle of Man, Australia, Switzerland and the Cook Islands.
Halong Bay is the most popular tourist attraction in Vietnam and there are many hundred tour boats that sail around it but our captain is steering a course that avoids the regular routes so that often we are the only vessel to be seen weaving our way through the bizarre limestone (karst) islands.
This morning we visited what used to be a floating village. There is now one remaining inhabited house and that will be gone soon. The Vietnamese government has shifted everyone else to the mainland, partly to protect the environment of the Halong Bay world heritage site (the floating villagers treated the ocean as a very large drain), but also to give the people better access to hospitals and schools. They didn’t have any choice about leaving though. Three generations live in this house at the moment; grandparents, son and his wife, their children.
In the afternoon we took a sampan ride to visit the dark and light caves and the man’s wife was one of the oarsmen (oarswomen?) who rowed us there. Cave is a bit of a misnomer, it’s really a tunnel about 50m long through the karst into a lake in the middle of a karst island. It’s really impressive though.
In our group are two people who have been keen rowers, Riitta and Andrew, and they both persuaded their boatman to let them take over the oars. It’s not as easy as it may look. They ended up going around in circles. Phom Pha the dining supervisor on the Angkor Pandaw also had a go. He too sent us round in circles! Our oarslady thought we were all amusing – or possibly ridiculous. Good fun though.
