This beach goes to 11

Cat Ba cove at sunset

Today just might go down as one of the five best days in the history of the species. Yeah, building the pyramids must've been rad and David Lee Roth pushed the fun meter well into the red. But can you beat a lazy day at the beach, an amazing massage for under $3.00, a sweet sunset and an even sweeter glass of fresh-squeezed sugar cane? I think not. Caligula didn't even have it this good. From here on out when things go pear-shaped back home and I begin to lose the plot, I'm going to the Cat Ba Island of the mind.


Ca phe sua (drip coffee with condensed milk) and a mystery in hand, Ms. Hawai'i is firmly in control of the afternoon


Cooking in the cove


The People's laundry has been hung out to dry


Naughty locals keeping their distance


The sugar cane master at work


Is it possible to have it too good?

Salty dogs of Halong Bay

My sea legs won't go away. As I sit in this Internet cafe, I feel I'm rocking gently, side to side. Maybe I'm wishing I were still on the boat.



We arrived on Cat Ba Island two days ago. The island is mostly steep forested rock, but there's a small town here consisting of sidewalk cafes and tallish, ugly hotels, ranged along one of the most beautiful waterfronts I've ever seen. We found a hotel of minimal ugliness whose $10 room offered quite a view.



Early the next morning we loaded ourselves and our bags onto a small boat and set off to explore Halong Bay for two days.


Disembarking at our first stop, via high-tech gangplank

There were eight of us on board -- four San Franciscans and two Norwegians and a crew of two -- charting a course for aesthetic overload.




A sail in stone

For two days, we motored gently around the bay, gazing at huge pillars of limestone rising out of a green sea. Sometimes it all became too much for us and we had to abandon ship.





The Bay is full of fishing boats and little coracle-like rowboats, made of woven fiber covered with tar. At one point, we'd kayaked through a cave out to a small cove and were gliding along when we heard an echo. A man was singing as he and his wife rowed toward us, and the sound bounced off the rock walls around us, mixing with the splash of oars. His little girl waved, and then the three of them disappeared through the cave and out to the wider bay.


The gondolier and his family

These families live on floating houses with "yards" around them of planks that surround submerged nets. In these, they keep the seafood on the hoof, as it were, with a different net for each type of fish -- one net for the big blue crabs, one for eels, one for squid, and so on. (Our boat-mates got to eat some extremely fresh seafood.)



All the houses seemed to have dogs, as well. Most seemed to be guard dogs, barking loudly as our boat went by. One dog really went crazy when another fell in. That must happen a lot. Maybe it was laughing.

Some were a little calmer.


Off duty


Fish dog: a noble calling


Fish cat, too

The sun goes down very early here. We ate dinner, sat around and talked, drank Beer Hanois, and surreptitiously looked at our watches: it was about 7. We made it to an honorable 9:00 and conked out.

In the morning, it felt like we were camping, brushing our teeth off the sides of the boat and jumping in the water in lieu of a shower.



We had another day of kayaking, swimming, and mostly just gazing. We also visited an enormous cave full of stalagmites, stalactites, and rock formations that I suspect would entertain the folks over at Linga.





By the time we put-putted our way back to Cat Ba, we were so relaxed it was all we could do to sit up for a picture.



We had to sit up a little more when we were dropped off outside of town, and we each had to get on the back of a motorbike for the short but exciting drive back. This for me was made especially exciting by a big backpack on my back, a small one on my front, a bag of food in one hand, and a driver who decided it would be fun to pass everyone ahead of us.

Fortunately we made it back to our hotel in one piece, just in time for another rather nice sunset.