Hạ Long Bay — The Towering Travelers

On Thursday, we flew to Hanoi and drove to Hạ Long. While we were on the bus (it was almost a 4-hour drive from Hanoi to Hạ Long), Dang started telling us about the attitude toward Americans in the north. He told us a story about a tour group he had last year that included two Americans who were Vietnam War veterans. He said that while they were going through one of the villages, an old lady invited the group in for tea. While they had tea, she explained that she had five sons; all of them went to the front and none of them came back. Her tiny house was built by the government, and she received a government pension every month. Someone in the group asked what she thought about Americans, and she said that her sons were killed by the American military, not the American people. When Dang told her that two of the men in his group had fought in the war, she hugged them and said that she was so thankful that they were able to return home to their families when he sons were not. Dang said this is characteristic of the Vietnamese people. They see the American military and the American people as two different things, and they like the American people. It’s not even forgiveness; there was never anything to forgive. It’s an astonishing and humbling outlook.

Rice fields (currently being used for rotational crops) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The highways continue to be madness. Tour buses passing semi trucks. Tour buses passing other tour buses. It’s also very slow to drive long distances if you don’t have a road with a large shoulder and do have a vehicle too large to carhop in. There are lots of large trucks that clog up the roadways. In my experience, honking can mean an assortment of things in Vietnam, depending on the context. These include:

Go faster
Get out of my way
I’m crossing the street even though my light is red because I feel like it, get out of my way
The light is about to turn green and you’re still sitting here, what is your problem
I’m merging, make room
I’m turning, make room
I’m about to pass you
I’m passing you
Oncoming traffic, I am in your lane because I’m passing this slowpoke
Oncoming traffic, move to the outside edge of your lane so I can make a new lane in the middle to pass this slowpoke
Bus who is passing a semi, you are in my lane instead of yours, please stop
White person on a bicycle who I am passing, you look ridiculous.

Hạ Long Bay out of our hotel room window (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Friday morning, we took a boat ride out onto Hạ Long Bay in a traditional wooden junk. There are no words for Hạ Long Bay. There are almost 2000 naturally occurring islands jutting out of the water, and each one has caves inside. Sometimes there are villages of a couple hundred people, who often live completely on boats and floating structures without ever touching the shore. I’ll let Jason’s photos speak for themselves.

Boats cruising Hạ Long Bay (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dang shows us where the picture on the 200,000 VND note came from (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Us in Hạ Long Bay (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the almost 2,000 islands (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A floating village in Hạ Long Bay (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Part way through the boat ride, we joined the cluster of boats trying to get close to the Trong Mai Islet, or fighting cock rocks, which Dang says is the only definite distinguishing characteristic between Hạ Long Bay and similar bays in China and Thailand. Apparently it’s a huge deal for Asian tourists. There were about 15 boats trying to get close at the same time, and one of them kept hitting the other boats. It was a total mess.

Boats jostling for space at the Fighting Cock Rocks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We visited one cave, Động Thiên Cung, which was massive and had lights highlighting the various caverns.

Động Thiên Cung (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On the boat ride back to the shore, we were served a seafood lunch. Most things were very tasty, including a really good pumpkin soup.

Delicious pumpkin soup during lunch on the boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After our boat ride, we drove back to Hanoi and Dang told us more about life in Vietnam. Dang’s wife’s family is Buddhist, and she had to convert to Catholicism to marry him. His father was also Buddhist, and converted for his mother. This is a requirement of the Catholic Church. When Dang was getting married, he went with his wife to the fortune teller to get a date picked, as is custom. The fortune teller picked December 25th, but the priest said this would not work because it is Jesus’s birthday. They went back to the fortune teller and got a new date in February, and Dang booked a restaurant for the wedding, since this needs to be done six months in advance of the date. Then, the bride’s mother got upset because if they got married on that date, they wouldn’t have children, and demanded that they change it. Dang was upset because he had already paid the $100 USD deposit on the restaurant and would lose it if they changed the date. The mother-in-law insisted, so they went and got a new date. Then, Dang’s grandmother died, and no one can get married the same year a relative dies. So they got a fourth date, and finally got married two years after they had initially started trying. Dang says that 90-95% of marriages in Vietnam are love marriages, and this helps the couple stay together “like sticky rice.” He said Americans have love marriages as well, but they get divorced because they don’t go to a fortune teller and pay attention to compatibility.

The average person in Vietnam earns a little over $2000 USD per year. They only have to pay taxes if they earn over $450 USD per month, which is a small amount of the population. Dang says a lot of these people don’t pay, though; they just take $400 a month and then get the rest as a lump sum bonus at the end of the year, which is untaxed. Farmers are 70% of the population and earn a very small amount of money, so many of them want their kids to be educated to get out of farming. Secondary school costs money, but the rural farmers only have to pay 20% of tuition.

Public kindergarten is government subsidized and costs about $40/month. There isn’t room for everyone, so once a year, parents have to get up at 1 a.m. and wait in line to get their kid enrolled. There is a lot of under the table money involved. Private kindergarten costs about $90/month. International kindergarten is the top tier and costs about $1000/month. It offers kids more opportunities and has more activities, like field trips.

When someone needs to see the doctor, they go to the nearest hospital, sign in, and wait. There are three levels of patient. The first knows the doctor, and these people get seen first. The second level gives the doctor money under the table in order to get seen next. Everyone else gets seen afterward.

On Friday evening we arrived in Hanoi and finally had the amazing pho we had been waiting for. It was at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that only served one thing—beef phở—for a set price. There were no white people there, and the food was absolutely amazing.

Phở Thìn (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Putting together the phở (Photo/Jason Rafal)