Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, 9th Jun 2006

Ha Long Bay is a popular destination for travellers who visit the north of Vietnam, with many agencies in Hanoi offerring day trips at relatively inexpensive prices. Large, gawdy-coloured ferries, the sole purpose of which is to carry visitors, like those in the picture above are a common sight, compared to the wooden rowing boat in the bottom right.

Yuck, seafood. Enough said.

The only instances where I form favourable opinions of these creatures come when they're either behind glass panels in a proper aquarium, or in the open sea. Put them on a plate, to serve, and you'll catch me holding my nose and looking the other way, if I'm to be found around at all.

There're these boathouses scattered all around the waters within Ha Long Bay selling live seafood, targetting the appetite of the tourist hordes, however unfathomable it appears to me, for the poor creatures. Once purchased, they are then cooked on board the kitchens of the larger tourist ferries. My group bought some fish, which they steamed. I did not partake of even a morsel.

Yes, I checked first. It was moored. In this picture is the same boathouse in which the previous photograph was taken. This was taken when my companions were selecting their fish.

The Thien Kung Caves in Ha Long Bay. Translated, it means the Heavenly Caves (a Mandarin-speaker needn't climb a mountain to translate that, given the close relationship between itself and the Vietnamese language).

Zhong Wei was there shortly after I was, or was it before. And he claimed, the veracity of which I cannot certify, that the reason why these caves were so cool on the inside was because they were air-conditioned, citing as evidence the noisy generators that he saw near the entrances and exits. He went on to tell a disbelieving me that the whole of Ha Long Bay was air-conditioned as well, and that it was fake.

What? It's a World Heritage Site!

According to Vietnamese folklore, the limestone karsts which litter Ha Long Bay were formed out of the pearls which were shot from a dragon's mouth sent by the Vietnamese king against a Mongolian invasion fleet. A tall tale, no doubt, but one which was has its roots in actual Vietnamese history. In the fourteenth century (if I've gotten my facts right), a Vietnamese general won a famous naval victory over the Mongols here in Ha Long Bay. This victory was probably the source of the legend.