Impressions of Ha Long Bay

Part I: Arrogance

We set out from the harbor in light fog. The forecast for the day was overcast and cold—not ideal for climbing up and throwing yourself off of limestone islands into the ocean. But that’s why I came to Vietnam, and it was the only chance I would get because, unknowingly, I had chosen a time of the year when the daily tides were too low for safe deep water soloing. This was the one day that the tide was at a reasonable height. Despite less than ideal temperatures, I decided to go for it.



Ha Long Bay

I boarded a junk boat replete with tourists embarking on package deals to see the bay. The majority of their carry-on luggage included enough Tiger Beer to induce something like seasickness. Perhaps the kayaking and climbing included in the trip was merely the warm-up to “earn” drinking rights come noon. Or, let’s face it, 10:30. For some, the climbing trip would be the highlight of their time in Vietnam, a proud Facebook post declaring their extreme adventure: “Rock Climbed in Vietnam”. Others were wary of the adventure elements of the outing, having been forced along by their significant others.

“I don’t want to go out in the kayak,” I overheard a girlfriend say to her boyfriend.

“C’mon baby. We can go see a nice beach,” was his response.

“But it’s cold out and I hate kayaks.”

“You don’t hate kayaks, honey. We took kayaks on our vacation in Maui. Remember?”

“Yeah, and I told you I didn’t like it.”

“I thought you said you had a good time.”

“No I didn’t. And now I’m staying on the boat.”

The conversations went on like this, some making me wonder why people decided to travel here in the first place. I caught the middle of a Dutchman’s complaints to a Canadian that he met on the boat.

“And then when we got into the taxi, the driver couldn’t speak any English!”

“I know,” the Canadian responded. “Everywhere we have gone in Vietnam, no one speaks any English. I was trying to rent a motorbike and I had no idea what the guys trying to sell it to me were telling me. I kept saying ‘English! English!’ and they just looked at me like I was crazy. Thailand is much better.”

“Yeah, I like Thailand a lot more,” the Dutchman agreed.

I tried to hide in a remote corner of the boat, not wanting to be associated with the tourists. To my dismay, I was discovered by a pasty white Aussie with shorts that didn’t leave much to the imagination.

“You going on the Deep Blue Soloing excursion too?”

I cringed. Though I was going on the deep water soloing boat, I hadn’t signed up nor paid for an excursion. I had worked out a deal with the company in charge of the trips, a group of climber’s from around the world. If I helped them out with some menial tasks, I could go out to deep water solo for free. The transaction made me believe that I would be freed from tourist status and that, for some reason, my trip to climb the limestone islands would be much more legitimate than the pasty Aussie's. I ignored the fact that what he was planning on doing and what I intended to do was, in every detail, the exact same thing.

“Yeah. I’m going deep water soloing too,” I responded.

“Ah, great mate! Looks like good fun, eh?”

Unenthusiastically I agreed, “Yeah. Looks like good fun.”

Though he was unaware, he was slowly bleeding my desire to try a facet of climbing that I had believed was dangerous and for experts only. Now a ‘gumby’, as we call them in the elitist climbing world, was showing me that deep water soloing wasn’t really that extreme. Afterall, if he can wander in from a Hanoi resort and give it a shot, how extreme could it be? He continued to make things worse with the comment,

“My wife’s coming too. We don’t do the rock climbing much. I’m more of a scrambler myself. But it looks like a fun thing to try. Have you ever rock climbed?”

I’ve been climbing for thirteen years. Climbing was one hundred percent of my identity through high school and college. When I started teaching and traveling it was reduced to ninety percent. I have put up first ascents in the Andes, spent days on big walls in Yosemite and have free soloed up to eight hundred feet. I scoffed at such a question.

“Yes, I’ve rock climbed,” I responded bluntly.

“You ever done anything like Deep Blue Soloing?”

“Yeah. Once in Spain.”

“Is it fun? Is it scary?”

Is it fun? Is tossing your body from twenty meters up into the maw of a cold and angry sea fun? Scary? Is being gripped on the underbelly of a limestone behemoth, sweating while an overdose of adrenaline gushes into your brain, scary? Is having lactic acid turn your forearms into mush while you contemplate the odds of certain death before you release yourself to the unforgiving hand of gravity, scary?

My response: “Yeah, something like that.”

“Great! I’m stoked, mate. See you out there!”

When he left, my ego torqued something inside of my chest. I recited to myself, as if it was a mantra, “You’re not one of the tourists. You’re not one of the tourists.”

Part II: The Floating Villages of Ha Long Bay

Before the junk boat arrived at the deep water soloing islands, it passed through the fishing villages of Ha Long Bay. The villages were made up of small ramshackle houses, walkways and dangling electrical wires; normal fare for a developing country. Dogs wandered around sniffing at trash. Families sat in front of small cafes talking to their neighbors. Televisions ran commercials for shampoo. There were places to bathe, to buy fruits and vegetables, to play games with friends and to buy clothes. All of this is not uncharacteristic of a village, and would hardly be worth mentioning if the villages didn’t happen to be floating in the middle of the bay, like populated masses of seaweed that rose to the surface.

There are thousand of islands in Ha Long Bay, and between them, bobbing up and down in the turquoise water, hundreds of floating villages. The limestone islands that rise vertical out of the sea and are capped with dense jungle are uninhabitable. Yet the sea is optimum for fishing, an industry where many make their livelihood. The one pesky detail that gets in the way is that there is no good land to live on. The solution: build the villages on the water.

The foundations of the villages, from what I could gather, were made up of large empty blue barrels that acted as buoys laying horizontally in the water. To the barrels the villagers lashed boards that connected them to other barrels, and then to others, creating a large grid of a floor from which everything else could be erected. The floor stayed as a grid, or rather, the fishermen didn’t board it closed like a basketball court or ballroom dance floor. They kept the floor open, porous, allowing the fishermen to drop their nets into the water from large open squares between the planks. Each open square acted like small farm tracts, but instead of vegetables, the fishermen would pull fish out from their tract. 

This layout of open planks made the structure of the village foundation look precipitous, like walking beams in a skyscraper skeleton during its construction. To pass from one area of the village to another, the villagers would have to walk planks of wood that were not tightly secured to anything and that ebbed and swayed from the movements of the sea. The instability appeared to have no impact on the villagers. Small children would run across the planks with awkward, new steps, but with as much confidence as we would have taking a single step on solid ground. The adults could maneuver and balance on the planks while carrying large loads suspended from bending boards lashed to their shoulders. Even the dogs would bound and leap from one line of planks to another while chasing or attacking one another.

Floating Village of Ha Long Bay

It was a sight to be seen. From the junk boat, I pondered a life on a floating village in Ha Long Bay. I wondered how I would adapt to living on planks in the sea, in a house no bigger than my bedroom, among people who slaved everyday in order to provide themselves with basic necessities.

I caught the eye of a girl who sat on the corner of one of these villages. She was looking out at our boat. She appeared to be doing the opposite of me, imagining a life in my position. I wondered what she thought of the foreigners who took boats out into the bay in order to climb rocks. The notion must have been ridiculous to her. Why on earth would we come all the way from lands with other people that looked like us in order to climb up islands and fall into the sea? Didn’t we have families to fish for? Or was it true what her friends told her, that the foreigners had too much money and could do any silly thing they imagined; like ride motorcycles across all of Asia, or buy big islands where they would put only one enormous house and not let anyone else in.

The exchange of glances and thoughts was brief, but I felt unsettled for some reason, like my life was the wrong one. I felt guilty and ashamed. Hiding from the girl’s gaze, I tried to blend back in with the rest of the tourists.

Part III: Humility…hopefully

We departed the junk boat on a basket boat, a small, rickety craft, the stern half covered with a deteriorating black tarp. The bow of the boat was a beaten deck that was meant to be the launching pad to get onto the walls we were going to climb. I sat under the tarp in a cheap bathing suit that I bought at the market the day before. The seams were already ripping and the cut exposed more of my white legs than I cared to reveal to the others. The Aussie sat across from me. Next to him was his wife. A breeze caused us all to shiver even though none of us had taken the plunge yet.

The guide, an American girl who had been living on the main island for the past four months, shouted a non stop stream of warnings and instructions at us over the noise and fumes of the basket boat motor. It felt like a briefing on how to skydive moments before they threw you out of the plane.

“Okay guys! You all psyched?! Great! Listen carefully! Deep water soloing is dangerous! You can get hurt! When the boat gets to the wall you must immediately get to your starting holds! Don’t hesitate! When you are secure we will push the boat away from you! Do not let go of the holds or you will fall on the boat and you will get seriously injured! If you fall climbing, push away from the wall or you may hit another part of it on your way down! Always look down at the water before you fall! There may be jellyfish, trash, or rocks right where you are going to fall. Do not, I repeat, do not fall on any objects! Jump away from the objects or you will get hurt! Okay?! Great! Who’s up first?!”

With no hesitation, I volunteered. I had been waiting months for my chance at this. The boat approached the wall and I grabbed a pair of starting holds. Heeding the guide’s advice, I held strong and waited for the boat to move out of my way. When it was clear, I started up the overhanging limestone.

I chose my initial route as a warm-up, something I knew I could easily do. I placed my feet intentionally, moved my hips and torso to maximize efficiency and cruised up the wall. Fear never took ahold of me. It didn’t have time to. Within two minutes, I was twenty meters up.

“Nice job Josh!” I heard the Aussie yell from the basket boat.

When I looked down to acknowledge the comment, I realized the folly in choosing a warm-up route first. Though it was quick and easy and I had no problem I with the actual climbing, I was stuck at twenty meters, facing one solution to get off: jump.

I didn’t like the idea. Yes, I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew that I would have to hurl myself into the sea eventually, but when I was faced with it as real, and my only option, I froze.

“Uh…so I just, uh, jump?” I shouted from the wall.

“Yeah! How else you gonna get down?” the guide shouted in response.

Good point.

“Maybe I can climb down a little and then jump,” I offered as a counterpoint.

“Or you can man up and stop being such a baby!” was the guide’s rebuttal.

“You got it Josh! C’mon mate,” The Aussie shouted.

Damn supportive Aussie. I became sure that if he were in my position he would jump without hesitation. The thought torqued my chest again, my ego reminding me of its presence.

“Okay,” I shouted. “Here goes.”

I tried to take control over my impulse to down climb to a more reasonable height. The jump at the end was supposed to be part of the thrill of deep water soloing but I didn’t want to do it because, well, it was scary!

The Aussie started a countdown, “Three! Two! One!”

Inhaling, I released both hands from the rock, pushed away with my feet and felt gravity whip me down towards the water. My head contemplated how I should fall, when I should hold my breath, if I should close my nose or not, where I should put my arms, all of it, just a little too late. I smacked the sea with appendages akimbo, taking in enough water through my nose to fill a water bottle. When I surfaced, the basket boat was already coming to pick me up.

“Ah man! Awesome mate! Nice job,” the Aussie said as he patted me on the back. Sea water choked the back of my throat and flowed out of my nose.

The Aussie asked excitedly, “So? How was it?”

I paused and considered the experience. I could still taste the salt water in the back of my throat.

“Well. It was…scary! But it was totally fun!”

“I knew it,” he responded.

*  *  *

Enjoying a Tourist Excursion

We all made a good go of it on the island cliff. The sun never did come out and we shivered between every break when we weren’t on the wall or falling into the sea. The Aussie did a stand up job. Climbing to the same height as me, he also went through the same hesitation before it was time to jump. Our shared fear of jumping gave us something to talk about back on the junk boat.

“Oh man, my brain was like, ‘Don’t jump. Don’t jump.’ But I just had to tell myself to go,” the Aussie described his experience.

“Me too!" I replied. "It’s funny, I thought it would be easier than it was, but I really had to convince myself to jump."

Smiling, the Aussie asked, “Hey, you want a Tiger Beer? We brought loads.”

I reflected on my past criticisms of the tourists, and the hypocrisy I was now living. “Yeah, I’ll take a beer. Thanks.”

Part IV: Nightlights

I was already buzzed when the junk boat started making its way back to the harbor. Because of the clouds that had been in the bay all day, the night snuck up almost unnoticed. There was no impressive sunset or clear transition to darkness. It was just, suddenly, night.

A group of six Dutchmen, including the one I overheard earlier in the day, plopped down around me on the upper deck of the boat. Their collection of empty beer bottles had grown in number.

One of them turned to me and asked, “You ever been to Thailand?”

“No,” I responded, laughing a little. “But I hear it’s nice.”

“Oh, so nice!” he said energetically. “And the traveling is so easy! I really like it there.”

We ended up talking for awhile about the things tourists talk about: where else has the other been, what was nice about it, what didn’t you like, where were you planning on going next. He offered me more beer and I became even more engaged in the conversation. At some point I mentioned that I live in Japan.

“Japan!” the Dutchman commented, “Do you speak Japanese?”

“Well, not really. I’m learning.”

“Does anyone speak English?”

“Not too many people where I live,” I replied, expecting to start a debate about the merits of a country not catering to English speaking tourists.

“And is it difficult? You know, not knowing Japanese and them not speaking English?”

I pondered the question. “Well…yeah. It is difficult.”

“Don’t you get frustrated?” he asked.

Again I became reflective of the experience, “Yeah. I guess I do get frustrated.”

“I bet. That’s how I feel here in Vietnam. No one speaks English here!”

I still knew that was where our theories about our frustration would diverge. Whereas I liked the frustration because it motivated me to learn Japanese, he disliked it because it made it harder for him to enjoy his vacation. But regardless, we were still talking about the same thing: frustration. And wherever it leads, the initial feeling is still a feeling that we can both agree isn’t a good one.

“I understand the feeling,” I replied.

“Yeah, I bet you do. Hey, want another beer?”

“Sure. But I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

After the bathroom visit I started heading back to the upper deck, where I had sat talking with the Dutchman. Before ascending the ladder to the deck, I paused and looked out into the bay. We were passing the villages again.

They were lit up now, the sound of generators humming from within the houses and shops. The lights illuminated groups of the fisherman gathered with their families for dinner. The walking planks, fishing nets and stray dogs were obscured by the darkness.

I could hear the Dutchmen laughing and talking loudly on the upper deck, their debauchery now enough to make them embarrassing spectacles for the rest of the tourists on the boat. When one of them started to sing loudly, a family from the floating village, eating quietly on the floor outside of their tiny home, turned and stared at the boat. A girl who was eating with them and who I imagined to be the daughter, looked up at the singing Dutchman and then down to the main deck, at me. I looked back at her as our boat motored by, each of us pondering again what life was like on the other side. I kept looking at her until the village disappeared behind an island and all became darkness again. Thoughts of life on the floating village passed through my head like an ether. Hearing the jovial laughter from the upper deck, I made way back, joining the tourists, the Dutchmen and the free beer.