Emerald waters

Vietnam surprised me. My expectations were not all that clear to begin with, but I do know what I did not expect to see. I did not expect to see poured concrete houses with decorative French facades, rising a dozen stories above the street level. I did not expect the spring's perpetually gray sky or lusciously green rice fields. I did not expect the scores of motorbikes dashing between each other on every street amid honking for every pedestrian and fellow biker. Nor did I expect to see small Thai women selling baguettes on every street corner, nor have lunch with a general of the Vietnamese People's Army. But I did see all these things and more.

The real highlight of the trip was Halong Bay. The Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site, consists of hundreds and hundreds of small islands, rising almost vertically out of the water. The walls are sheer and forboding, their tops verdant and tree-covered. We took a boat through the whole long formation to one of the largest islands, Catba, which has a tourist settlement there that looks like, or so I heard at least, Brighton Beach. It's a touristy destination and not one I would have otherwise mentioned were it not for the incredible beauty of the place and everything that people like me aren't really meant to see.

A group of us decided to wake up early and rent kayaks to really explore part of the Bay. The itinerary called for hanging around the city or hiking in the hills, but that's not why Halong Bay is a well-known place. People travel there for what's out on the water. I shared a kayak with Will Cole and we all set off onto the cool emerald water. A significant number of the locals live on floating shacks behind the island, attached with only to some boards standing on blue plastic barrels. As we paddled around and into small lagoons and open water, we spied a cave opening in one of the islands. What better to do than explore it?

We managed to tie our kayaks to the barnacles and make our precarious way up to the cave opening. It was a hollow taller than it was deep and it didn't seem to have been visited in handful of years. Graffiti lined the walls, scrawled in by Vietnamese during the war. The only dates were from '67 to '76. Then we all noticed a small hole in the far side of the cave. No one had a flash light but we did have a camera. The eight of us followed one another down this dark, warm tunnel, led only by the occasional too-bright flash. Fortunately enough none of us knocked ourselves out or got stuck crawling from one space to the other. We realized, in the absolute dark at the end of crawl space, that the world was a different place now than when so many people had last occupied that space.

Onward, out into the light and water of the bay. My favorite part of being in a kayak was feeling close to the water, like I was in the Bay itself, exploring and cruising along. After another hour or two of this, we found an island with a beach and disembarked there. The sand was full of shells and coral. Simply bending down yielded heaping handfuls of colorful shells and faded white sea creatures. The black rocks were worn smooth in some places, barnacled in others, and all over there was peace and solitude. The sea never ceases but in a different way than the incessant noise of the city. It's calm out there...

Adieu, Halong Bay. Ni hao, China...