Ha Long 2

While noodling around the 2,000 islands that fill Ha Long Bay, we were rarely out of sight of a small 2- to 10-person fishing boat. The traditional fishing practices of the area involved small family groups who rarely left the water - they were born, lived, and died on fish boats and small floating homes with fish nets attached where live catch could be fattened up.

At some, the revolutionary government of Vietnam brought revolutionary things to these rural backwaters: things like schools, medicine and all the conveniences of modern life. They faced a problem familiar to those of us in colonial nations: how do cost-effectively deliver these services to essentially nomadic people living in small community groups. Naturally, they came up with a solution that is also familiar: a Reserve System.

The Vietnamese Government assembled the fishing families of Ha Long into several floating villages, populations between 300 and 500 people. this allowed them to build a floating school for the children, a floating community hall, and provide for many of the modern conveniences (yes, we even saw TV antennae and heard Karaoke machines) while allowing the fishing families to continue their fishing ways.

We toured one of these villages, being guided around by a local woman paddling a bamboo boat. This village subsisted on fishing, but also had a pearl farm attached, and we saw how cultured pearls were created by opening the young oyster and inserting a small irritant and a mother-of-pearl nucleus.

Schlepping gawking tourists around by bamboo boat also appears to be an important part of the local economy.

The next 18 hours were a bit of a blur, as we spent 4 of them being battered by the Vietnam highways system in a mini-bus, 2 of them buying provisions and pho' on the streets of Hanoi, and 12 of them watching a very wet countryside go by on the train to Hue.

We are headed south, looking for some sun.

Oh, and I am getting the sense that the general digestive malaise I am currently feeling might not be a result of my bar bill on the boat, but of something I might have eaten. That would be a first for me, as I have always had a bit of an iron stomach when traveling. Wish me luck!

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