Friday 8th
March
Last
night we had a (beautiful and delicious – Phil Kelly is a great chef!) dinner
at the Motor Yacht Club, former and beloved home of 2XS. I had written a small begging letter, to be
included in the weekly club newsletter.
I don’t think I was specific enough about the fact that I wanted people
to donate their discarded summer clothing, and maybe ONE ball… I am a bit
overwhelmed by people’s generosity – I am looking very specifically at you, Tim
and Jan! And at the other people, new to
the club, who gave us a big bag full of beautiful brand new t-shirts. I think I am going to have to buy a shiny new
(waterproof…) camera so I can take photos of happy people wearing the lovely
new items of clothing, playing with the shiny new balls, fishing with the hooks
lines and sinkers!
Sailing but…not on 2XS….More
Junk – Halong Bay – 2008
The
reason we had gone to this particular town was because they had a few
boat-builders there, left over from the heady days of mass junk-building. Vinh managed to find somebody who could
fashion a new big wooden rudder; it was just a matter of waiting. We went out into the bay and anchored, and
had a very nice time swimming and napping.
Poor Kerry was very brave about all of this. He has a back and neck injury, and it was all
too possible for him to get into the water, and all too impossible for him to
get back up the ladder onto the boat. So
he had to stand stoically on the deck, sweltering, and watching us as we
frolicked.
It
was time for Dan and Phuong to leave us and go back to Hanoi, to Phuong’s World
of Bellydance, and to Dan’s three restaurants in the old quarter. As they left, a police officer came charging
along the jetty on a motorbike. Not a
smile; could he have our passports. Now!
We handed them over meekly - what else can you do? And he vanished. For hours!
Goodness knows what he was doing.
Checking that we had spelled our names correctly? Wondering why I had so many in-and-out visas
for Chile? Probably he was copying them
and entering all details into a huge ledger that nobody would ever want to look
at - such is bureaucracy… Eventually he came back, still sans smile, but avec
passports, so we were very relieved.
Yes
French words creeping in. One of the
many nice aspects of this holiday was, for me, the fact that so many people
spoke French, and not English at all.
Tourists and travellers, that is.
I don’t think many Vietnamese speak it at all, except to sell things in
tourist areas to the hordes of French tourists.
The French colonists left Vietnam in the 50s; we didn’t meet anybody
from that era with French language skills… Patrick Moreau, who was on this trip
to make the documentary, did speak English, but not all that fluently. After a few days of ignoring him - this was a
bit like my no talking to neighbours on
planes until landing policy - I discovered that he was a nice man, very
interesting, full of experience and knowledge.
He was, I think, quite relieved to be able to speak French with me as we
bobbed about in the sea. He found my
English, and Rina’s, easy to follow, but couldn’t understand much of what Pete
said; conversely Pete couldn’t understand his accent either. Patrick was the first of many people we met
with whom I could chat very happily - I haven’t spoken so much French probably
since I was in my teens!
Our
junk went back to Cat Ba once Dan and Phuong had gone, and we all moved onto
Vinh’s boat. It was a lovely junk, but
not equipped with mod cons. We all
elected to sleep on the deck, rather than in the very small cabin, which was
the home of a huge swarm of mosquitoes, and extremely hot. We did have to go through this Cabin of Sting
and Stink to go to the horrid little toilet, but we tried to avoid this ordeal
as far as possible. Patrick, stoical old
codger that he was, slept down there; not sure how he managed! He seemed immune to sunburn, and to mosquito
bites.
Kerry
thought we should make use of our leisure time to make up a poem about our
adventures thus far. It was so hot…my
brain was a steamy mess and I don’t think anyone else was much better. As I lay on my beanbag mattress, I did make
up a beautiful ditty, to the tune of Sloop
John B, but when I came to the next morning, it was all gone. About all I could come up with was,
We
sailed on a junk named Junk
With a crew nearly always drunk….
The
crew weren’t really drunk, but we did notice they had beer and bongs for
breakfast, vodka for lunch, and not much else… The bongs were huge and fearsome
looking things, with much bubble and hubble to them. We found out they didn’t smoke marijuana in
them, just extremely strong tobacco which made their eyes roll somewhat in
their heads. And Vinh’s junk was indeed
officially named Junk. He had some
beautiful name chosen - Pearl Dragon of
Halong Bay, something like that, but he was late with his registration
papers and it was formally named Junk,
nothing more or less.
My
Cat Ba hat was a great success. It was a
flimsy straw thing, in several shades of beige, nicely woven, and cost me about
$1. I found it very useful, but often in
fact couldn’t find it at all. Hmmm…where
is my hat NOW, I would ponder, and then there would be Captain Kuu, with it
firmly rammed onto his head, or one of the crewmen, at ease, gazing into the
middle distance, with it tied on tightly, brim turned back. I was going to
abandon it before coming home, but it was so faithful, survived so many
adventures and misadventures, that I crammed it into my suitcase, and I should
think it will last me a good few years to come.
Rina also bought one, but hers had brightly coloured strands woven into
it, and long fronds of palm leaf all around the brim. Not sure if hers lasted the trip back to
Brisbane…
Our
rudder was fixed, eventually, by small, strong boat builders, who had constructed
a new one. It was quite a process,
getting it back into place, out on the open water. Pete and Kerry were fascinated, and took many
photos, and videofilm, while Rina and I swam and then dozed - it was still very
very hot… Vinh was very relieved when it was all done; now we could, finally,
go to mystical magical (mythical??) Co To.
We had to cross quite a wide expanse of open water, and the wind was
coming up. We set forth, with Junk
valiantly lurching up and down the waves, until Captain Kuu rebelled. Mutiny on the Junk. He was absolutely NOT going out here. Too dangerous. So we turned back, not all that reluctantly,
and found a nice anchorage….
OK
so now for our next misadventure… It was very hot, and we were all asleep, or
stupefied, on our makeshift beds on the deck when a huge storm blew up. I knew I was getting rained on - horizontal
rain was making its way past the tarpaulin.
Nothing I could do, really, nowhere to go for shelter, so I just lay
there with my eyes closed, pretending nothing was happening. There was a lot of movement, Pete, crew,
Vinh, rushing about, some tense sounds from the engine area. We were anchored quite close to tall cliffs -
it is very hard to be anywhere in Halong Bay and not be close to tall cliffs,
the islands are everywhere. Time to haul
anchor and start the engine because we were drifting quite swiftly towards the
rocks. You know the sound your car
makes, when the battery is flat?? A
disappointing sort of sound… Kerry’s account is much more concise….
Anchored off cliff
overnight. Storm came at 3.30 and blew
hard and dragged anchor towards cliff.
Battery failed and no motor.
Anchor started to grab and storm blew out. Tried to charge with generator but the aldo
failed. Day came and we waited for a
boat to deliver battery. Came at 10.30
am and we took off. 1 hour and motor
overheated and adrift again.
There
are, or so they told me, 126 million mobile phones in Vietnam. (Not sure how this could be; the population
is only 89 million…) Captain Kuu, at any rate, had one of them, and he rang for
help. Another junk, with some very
snooty-looking tourists, turned up at 10.30.
Well maybe we all looked a bit wild and feral, with our salty hair and
dirty clothes. Living on a small deck
with no washing facilities probably doesn’t do all that much for a girl’s
beauty regime… Rina managed to look quite lovely all the time (me – not so
much…) but her white clothes did get less white, despite much scrubbing in the
sea. The other junk had brought us some
spare batteries, and we had a bit of time pulled up alongside. Everyone encouraged me to go across to use
the gleaming toilet on our rescue junk, so I hopped over quite happily to sit
there and gaze at the four unfamiliar walls.
I came out after a few uneventful minutes, to find MY junk, Junk, about
to sail away. Without me! I was very upset; didn’t any of my friends
NOTICE I was missing? Especially as they
had shunted me across to the other boat only minutes before?? Captain Kuu came back alongside so I could
hop back over. His face was wreathed in
smiles; in fact he had tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks… Normally a
taciturn man, worried, to a greater or lesser extent, about what Junk was going
to do next, and what Vinh was going to ask him to do next, we had never seen a
smile before, let alone a guffaw. So
glad I was able to make him so happy…
As
Kerry said, we set off again, and an hour later our engine overheated… More
mobile phone calls, more waiting, then rescue by another friend of Captain
Kuu’s. This time we were towed, back to
Cat Ba, which turned out to be not too far away at all. We were dropped off at Kuu’s little floating
fish farm, which was very interesting.
We took some photos of the floating houses and farms, in their beautiful
sea-green colours. My favourite photo
has several dogs happily lolling about on the deck. Many of the dogs in Vietnam look like dingos,
sandy coloured, faintly feral. I showed
this photo to Leo, who, at the age of three, had very politely said, “Yes I
would LOVE to see your photos of Vietnam, Bardy!!” Such a treasure! I captured him on the couch, and said, “Look
at those floating houses, Leo! Can you
see what sort of animals they have living there with them?” He was mightily impressed. “Oh yes!” he said. “Polar bears!”
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