Halong Bay Lowlights

We are travelling in Vietnam, which is overall a very beautiful and interesting country. I'd expected Halong Bay to be one of the high points of the journey--mysterious rock formation rising out of the sea shrouded in mist and all that. Unfortunately the Vietnamese tourist industry has done their best to ruin it all. The only real way to see it signing up for a cruise, which all have a very pack 'em in, pack 'em out mentality. I think we actually signed up for one of the better ones too (the food was decent, we weren't freezing cold or wet at night, there weren't constant attempts to trick us out of money). What really annoyed me though was the mentality of packing people together and constantly "entertaining" them. The bay is majestic on its own, or it would be if we weren't constantly interrupted with karaoke, vegetable carving demonstrations, bad jokes, excursions to buy knick knacks. Incidentally, we learned nothing historical about the area nor any geological information about the rock formations. The junks which ply the bay do not sail at all, but are instead powered by noisy polluting engines. The sails are just decorations which they sometimes remember to throw up to make it look quaint.

The saddest moment was when we were offered an opportunity to pay extra to take a "bamboo rowboat" out to see a quiet inlet. It all started out well (aside from the fact that our boat was in no way constructed from bamboo). The rower made for a large stone arch. It was finally quiet, except for the birds of prey calling in the distance. Just as I was relaxed and happy we passed under the arch and made a beeline for the next empty spectacle--island monkeys for tourists to throw bread at. Then I realized our boat was along an invisible conveyer belt of other such non-bamboo bamboo boats, and all of them headed straight for the monkeys, threw bread at them for 5 minutes, then went straight back again. It's not a good idea for tourists to feed wild animals, but I suspect these animals weren't even indigenous, but were rather just hauled to that point specifically for tourists to throw bread at.

The photograph of the penguin trashcan is from the "cave tour." It would be a great new layer of hell to supplement Dante's Inferno for the 21st century. Many boatloads of tourists were crushed together as though it were rushhour on a New York subway and herded through caverns that were heavily damaged by all the sight seers breaking off rock formations and scrawling graffiti. The tour guides pointed out sections of the cave that looked vaguely like camel's heads and penises under the garish green and red lighting, and the obedient throng snapped constant photographs, creating a constant unpleasant strobe effect with their camera flashes.

The other photograph is from when they dumped us in kayaks to paddle around some tourist dump-off station for 20 minutes. Note Jenny's facial expression as our delighted tour guide takes a comemerative photo to hang on our mantle.