Nefelibata

I would have never thought that the very first cruise I’d be on would grant me the chance to have a taste of the authentic that I so long for and the uber modern bordering on tacky and opulent which I have come to abhor. Yet the one I took last year in the Hạ Long Bay was exactly that. And I absolutely loved it.

I love to travel because after too many weeks or even months of the daily and weekly routine of regular life and work that forcefully bind you to a place, holidays bring me the missed clean break from all of it. Thus, the further away, the better; the more unseen the landscape and people, the finer; the more unheard of ways of life and habit, the more interesting. Every time I get a chance to spend more time away on holiday I experience this break: it’s as if I’d suddenly landed on a different world, and it’s exhilarating.

A place called the bay of the descending dragon, where fewer than 1.600 people live mostly on floating villages in shallow waters, plying tens of species of fish and other hundreds types of mollusks and cultivating marine plants and algae while also navigating among almost 2.000 islands and islets qualifies in my book. Legend has it the jade Hạ Long Bay in northern Vietnam was created by a family of dragons sent by the gods to protect the people. As the enemy advanced, the dragons started to spit jade gems and emeralds, which abruptly rose from under the coastline waters and turned into the evergreen vegetation-coverwd rocky mountain islands and islets that decorate the bay. The invader ships hit the rocks, lost the battle, and ever since, the dragons stayed on Earth to protect the people. Nowadays, the bay of the descending dragon who had saved the locals yesteryear consists of a dense cluster of hundreds of limestone monolithic islands. They are covered with thick green jungle vegetation and they stand spectacularly risen from the ocean. Only some tens of these islands are actually inhabited, and many have become hollow, sheltering enormous caves that stood witness to ancient cultures as far back as more than 16.000 years.

Now it’s all peaceful and the dragons are nowhere to be seen, since they are not needed anymore: no enemies and no dangers. The cruise we took had us picked up by bus early in the morning from steamy Hanoi and to the Hạ Long Bay, where we stepped on the boat we’d spend the next two days on. It was hardly a movielike cruise ship, yet it was charming: wooden hard floors, window and door frames, 4-star cabins with private bathrooms and air conditioning on the lower deck, and terrace and sun beds on the upper one. We had lavish lunch and dinner there, we sipped cool wine and cocktails, but what I loved most were the surreal colors of the skies and clouds at sunset, the fresh breeze and the pleasant chill of night. All of a sudden, the full green all around had turned dark pink and reddish yellow – and these words don’t even do it justice.

And then there was the touristy stuff to do. I may not care much for them, but I can understand how so many people prefer them: too few holidays a year, too long hours the rest of the year, too much of a routine-based life. Of course they’d want to check out the pristine beach and water around Ti Top island, named after the second man to orbit the Earth, Gherman Titov. It would definitely qualify for a longed for shipwreck on a deserted island: it’s an islet, only 3.7 hectares, and the strip of beach has almost white sand, whereas its waters are blue and pleasantly wavy. The rock is a little over 100 meters high and it takes intrepid tourists in search of a breathtaking view some 450 steps, sometimes steep and slightly dangerous, to reach its top. But then the islet is anything but deserted: the beach is barely capacious for the swarm of tourists, the way up is laborious on the trail full of people, and the breathtaking views are scarcely available for more than the few seconds you need to take a couple of pictures, as you soon have to make room for the next fellow travellers. Nevertheless, it’s nothing some freshly squeezed sugar cane iced juice securely in your hand can’tmake up for.

There are heaps of things to do during a cruise among these islands and islets, for all tastes and preferences: you can kayak, snorkel, hike, trek, spelunk, or simply just lie down, read, and sunbathe. What I took away to last me for as long as coming back there would take were the colors, the shades and nuances, the hues and glows that surrounded me: emerald green for the waters and vegetation, white gold for the sand and beach waters, dark pink and reddish yellow for the skies and clouds at sunset.