TUESDAY AND A TRIP AROUND THE BAY

Tuesday posted Thursday

The throb of the engines have altered just slightly and there will soon be the sound of chains sliding against metal as the anchor breaks the water. We are at rest for the night now and can just make out the shapes of other boats as their sounds drift across the water of Ha long Bay. This is a vast areas of water with some one thousand nine hundred rocky outcrops that appear to drive through the water like icebergs. 

We had boarded out boat at lunchtime and lunch itself was a delicious selection of fish. Ha Long Bay is a  World Heritage Site. Our boat makes its slow passage through this scenery of jagged near-vertical rock ‘teeth’ covered for the most part in trees and scrub. Rather like the backcloth of a child’s puppet theatre, the view changes constantly. 

After a while our boat pulled up and emptied us (we think there are twenty or so in our group) into a smaller boat whence, all life jacketed, we were ferried to one of the fishing villages that are situated in Ha long Bay.

Each village is collection of single storey dwellings on pontoons, which are strung together. Once deposited on the main pontoon we were ushered, four to a boat and then in convoy set off. 

Each boat with its highly expert female oars person, took us around this water village and closer to the sheer cliffs. 

We left the village of Ba Hang and were back on board the mother ship for a welcome drink of red wine and dragon fruit.

Soon after the sun set, spilling pink and gamboge light across this huge peaceful mill pond with its cliffs getting darker still, bird cry stops and the light is turned out.

On board a boat somewhere a dog barks and the sound of our fellow passengers just permeates our cabin.  

LANDING UP ON MONKEY ISLAND

This morning it’s hard to believe its November 15^th There a little breeze and must be about 20 degrees and the waves are crashing right up on the beach, its high tide now, 6 am in the morning

Welcome to Monkey Island, a tiny island with two bays on opposite sides, on the East and West. We are West side and have spend the night here as part of our Ha long package.

This is the place to come to finish that book or think those thoughts or make that plan. A collection of about 12 bungalows and stilt houses clustered around the beach accommodates we who pass through.

Wednesday was a frantic timetable ended on our arrival on the small concrete landing stairs here at 2:30 yesterday afternoon.

We had risen at around 5:30 am to a lovely sunrise washed through pale clouds, a breakfast on board and then onto a small boat all twenty or so of us and across to some caves (The Caves of Awe) then across to another island, Titop. In 1962, this tiny island had the honour of receiving a visit from cosmonaut Ghermann Titop, a hero of the former Soviet Union, accompanied by President Ho Chi Minh. Thereafter Uncle Ho named it Ti Top Island

Then Sian and I were segregated onto a smaller boat and found ourselves to be the only two passengers on a day bunk that was to take here. It was 10 am and we were offered a beer (beer and coke it transpired where the only choices of beverage aboard). We motored very gently South East through the bay and islands out to the edge of this wonderland. 

We moored up once and in kayaks with our guide, Mr Chingh, led us through an underground cave in one of the island rock formations and after 10 minutes, once we were through the deep darkness, we entered a lake which must have been in the centre of this micro-island. We paddled around and then found our way back to the mouth of darkness and then eventually along side our vessel.

A lovely lunch ensued, prawns, rice, tofu, chicken and mushrooms, cold fries and hot rice. Pears for deserts and a nice lie down on the upper deck. It was time to move to Monkey Island. A gentle nearly two hour cruise.

Last night we had our beers on the tiny terrace and watched the sun go down. Nirvana was only slightly spoilt by the lighting of a fire to burn rubbish at the far end of the beach and the machining of some boat hull.  Eventually, we decamped to the bar with our neighbouring bungalow inhabitants ready for supper. 

Well, even Paradise can’t be completely perfect I’m sure.

THE REMENANTS OF WAR AND A TRIP TO THE POST OFFICE

An F34 Fighter-Bomber, two helicopters and four pieces of field artillery, all once the property, some forty years back, of the US government, were parked up outside the main entrance. They were most benign, least harrowing exhibits we would see at the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, a permanent exhibition housed, ironically, in the former US Information Building in the city centre.

Three floors of exhibits and photographs, including bottles of formaldehyde containing the foetuses altered by the terrible effects of the US Dioxins (Agent Orange) sprayed on Vietnamese jungles and villages. A room was full of testimonies and pictures of wrecked and maimed victims of this chemical element of the war.

Another two rooms were devoted the to reportage, it was surprising how many photographers lost their lives reporting the horrors of this conflict, including Larry Burroughs and Frank Cappra.

A floor is devoted to the story of how the millions of non-combatants lived and lost their lives from the early 1950’s through to 1975. Like all such conflicts this was hell on earth for the both sides and those caught in the crossfire.

The were a palpable feeling of shock, despair and discomfort on the faces of those visiting this place, a mood culpability amongst those of us from the West of a certain age.  For me it begged the question as to if, in thirty or so years time, tourists would be visiting Kabul, Afghanistan, to see a similar shocking displays of warfare’s ingenuity and hardship?

Point Counterpoint: After the Museum and a very strong sweet coffee we walked a few blocks east, to visit the General Post Office. Designed and built by Gustave Eiffel  (1886 – 1891) and mentioned in the Guidebook as a landmark. With its pinks and light ochre, rich mahogany counters and seating and all ironwork picked out in dark green it is an architectural flight of fancy. 

And the front entrance to the General Post Office was heaving with visitors, who like us, were gawping ceiling-ward. 

It was rather like entering a cathedral and looking up and towards the sanctuary. This familiarity was underpinned with a portrait of Ho Chi Min at the far end were in a minster once would see the risen Christ.

THE TUNNELS OF CU CHI

Today we were given a glimpse of a civilisation, a struggle and a nation and ingenuity all built on one determinant: a sense of purpose.

About 40 kilometres from Ho Chi Min City are located two tunnel systems used by the Vietcong, the North Vietnamese army during the conflict with the US, from 1960’s until the signing of The Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Over 200 kilometres of tunnels were dug with hand tools and bamboo baskets.

At Ben Duoc, recreated for our benefit, are tunnels, and mock-ups of the bobby traps and pits. As our guide demonstrated how each trap worked we could only wince at the unimaginable pain they would inflict.

An M70 tank, victim of a NVA delayed mine, was on display, and various place where unexploded munitions were ‘recycled for us against the US Forces. 

Entire villages and military forces waged war from below ground; ingenuity was stretched to the limit. And every facet of this resourcefulness was on display; even the sandals worn by the NVA with treads that in soft earth would give the impression of someone walking in the opposite direction.

As we walked through the trees and jungle, past bomb craters, an area all of which was once laid flat by napalm, the pathways were strewn with bomb shrapnel forming hard tracks for our progress.

Again this was another closeness to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. The film opens and Captain Willard, drunk in a Saigon hotel room reflects:

“Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger”.

ALONG THE MEKONG - CAPTAIN WILLARD’S RIVER

Hung, our guide, gave us a briefing as we left the city. This was all being done strictly to time. Russians, Chinese, Singaporeans, Australian and Dutch formed the company of travellers for the next eight hours, four on the bus to and from the Mekong Delta, and four on the river.

 I was going to get as close I would ever to Willard, 

"Captain Willard of 505 battalion, 173rd Airborne the central character in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now.

Two hours on narrow bus seat and we were aboard the boat and out onto the Mekong River. Grey blue brown a lethargic river but full of purpose as boat of all sizes made passage up and down its length.

In the film Willard describes this river:

"I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable.

 The brown river, the Mekong, must be about five miles across where we were; we saw livelihoods in evidence on every part of both banks.

And then the large boat on which we travelled moored up on one of the islands and we decanted ourselves into smaller boats and explored the backwaters. 

Palms, sugar cane and mango trees, crowding in on us, lined the brown tributaries . A stop for a place that made honey, another halt where they made coconut candy, and lunch elsewhere still. The sun pierced the foliage and turned the water to pale ochre as we tut-tutted, along the narrow canals. 

Eventually we emerged in to main river and were ushered into boat forty-five and then back along the broad brown stretch.

Again a piece of Coppola’s script came to mind: Robert Duval as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore:

" We'll pick your boat up and put it down like a baby, right where you want it. This is First of the Ninth, Air Cav, son - air mobile.

 I can take that point and hold it as long as I like -- and you can get anywhere you want up that river that suits you, young captain”.