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BY LUC CITRINOT

STEAMING THROUGH A DREAM

What spectacle on this planet can match the dreamscape

that is Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay?

WORDS AND PICTURES BY KEITH MUNDY

Towering karst island in Ha Long Bay.

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of that era, and still is, as one of beauty and charm. The Oscar-winning film Indochine (1993) played it up no end, and the Emeraude takes to this same stage. Stepping aboard, you are instantly in a world of polished board decks, gleaming brass fittings and pressed white ducks. At almost subliminal level, Louis Armstrong and Maurice Chevalier sing softly from somewhere. Brass fans whir, the signs say “pont principal” and “pont supérieur” instead of “main deck” and “upper deck”, the captain gives a Gallic welcome over the tannoy: “Bienvenus a bord!” The boat steams out of port towards a craggy mountain range in the distant sea; within a half hour, we’re amongst the rocky pillars of Ha Long, with all eyes on a towering wedge-shaped island with one side a sheer drop, topped by a Chinese pavilion. Every boat seems to head first for a horseshoe-shaped inlet enclosed within a great fortress of an island, entered via a narrow channel, to visit the so-called Surprise Cave. A maelstrom of motorised junks clowns around in this lagoon, a circus which some of us could do without. Cruising is the thing, slowly, effortlessly, dreamily, otherworldly, not sweatily clambering over, or inside, rocks – please. The Emeraude, too large to enter the lagoon, anchors outside and sends boxy little tenders in with trippers. The wise, however, remain on the lounge deck with exotic cocktails in hand, lolling in rattan chairs. From here on, I joined them. Ah, sweet farniente (as the French have copped from the Italians), joyous idleness, plus superb scenery. The real luxury of the Emeraude is the space, four decks to roam, including a capacious canopied lounge deck with bar and a deckchaired eyrie called the sun deck on top of that. All this gives unrivalled viewing opportunities, as the boat gently eases through the calm jade waters, passing sheer cliffs, rounding sharp headlands, opening vast vistas of rock-strewn ocean, turning into secluded coves, floating phantom-like through the lovely weirdness of an ancient flooded mountain range. Only the captain with his detailed charts has any idea where we are and where we’re going; for us dreamers, the archipelago is a total enigma, a vast geological jigsaw, an ever-changing, never-ending kaleidoscope of rocky forms

H a Long has this been going on? About ten thousand years, say the geologists. That’s how long two thousand-odd towers of jagged limestone

have been jutting exquisitely skyward from jade green seas in the Gulf of Tonkin, just off the coast of northern Vietnam, to make the matchless spectacle that is Ha Long Bay. There were about 500 million years of preparations, however – eruptions, erosions, desiccations, inundations, from the Cambrian period to the Holocene epoch, in which we now are, let it be understood. Creation takes its time, but it is well worth the wait. A “drowned karst landscape” for the geomorphologists, a dreamscape for most of us, Ha Long Bay is a place where nature becomes so strangely, gorgeously spectacular that you are spellbound, you are speechless. File away the explanations, sail into dreamland, slip into reverie, courtesy of your chosen vessel, which is usually a multi-decked imitation junk, the sails, if there at all, being solely decorative. The tourist love affair with Ha Long Bay – now big business with scores of cruise operators – has been going on only a century or so, starting with the French colonialists who barged into northern Vietnam in the 1880s. With their main port established at Haiphong, around 70 kilometres away, the French could hardly miss this spectacular marine phenomenon. Marauding Chinese and Vietnamese pirates were holed up in the archipelago – not surprisingly, because it’s just impossible to think of a better environment for playing seaborne hide-and-seek. Cruising the islands, you constantly see boats large and small, there one moment on a shimmering sea, gone the next behind some towering rock. Flushing the local buccaneers out for the sake of their shipping security, the French were inevitably dazzled by what they saw. Already in the local shipping business, the Roque brothers saw their opportunity and built four flat-bottomed paddle-steamers to transport cargo and provide pleasure cruises in this extraordinary archipelago. Today one boat, only one, deliberately harks back to that colonial era: the Emeraude (Emerald in English), a close replica of its predecessor of the same name from the halcyon days of French Indochina. Much has been made

A tourist junk sails in the sunset. Relaxing with a view on the Emeraude.

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glistening waters. Sea eagles circled and swooped. The original Emeraude sank in 1937, but we never felt the slightest hint of danger in this elegant tub. We just dreamt on. Indeed, this layer-cake boat is so stable that you never found yourself staggering along like a drunk, as per normal on board ship. Unless you were drunk, which could easily happen with two bars for less than 80 voyagers and a general inclination to relaxez-vous. Stormy weather would presumably change that, but our trip was decidedly plain sailing... apart from the delicious decadence, nature at its most magnificent, the tropical languor, the transcendental experience, and a few things like that.

The Emeraude: visit emeraude-cruises.com for more information.

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and shades. Some sources reckon there are about 3,000 islands, others insist on a strangely precise 1,969, and UNESCO gives a figure of 1,600 for its World Heritage Site, but who cares besides the geographers and bureaucrats? Sailing, we are sailing, to be free, to be free..... As to the origins, the geologists are, as ever, trounced by folklore, which recounts that the gods sent down a family of celestial dragons to defend the land from invaders. The dragons spat out jewels and jade into the sea, which turned into a multitude of jagged islands and islets that repulsed the enemy. The dragons liked their work so much that they decided to stay, hence the Vietnamese name Vinh Ha. Long, which translates as “Dragon Descending Bay”, or “Where the Dragon Descends into the Sea”. One is still there, apparently, sort of. There is a legend that a strange dragon-like creature called the Tarasque lurks in the bay, and fishermen swear they’ve seen it, the Ha Long Ness Monster, as it were. The only wondrous creature that appeared on our trip was Catherine Deneuve, who showed up in the après diner movie – you guessed it – Indochine. Commanding the lounge deck with supreme aplomb, she easily won the beauty contest between the bay and herself, if only because it was pitch black outside. Dawn revealed us anchored beside a great massif rising precipitously out of a grey sea. As we slowly moved on out, distant misty visions of tall rock formations paraded before our eyes, exquisitely drifting and morphing with our own progress. The sun rose and turned all from grey to gold. A man in a basket boat rowed alone across

The Emeraude cruising the archipelago.

Dusk view from the Emeraude.