Today is primarily a travel day. We are going back to the Hanoi airport and then to Hue which is the historical capital of the country. I was up early to do Tai Chi on the deck. One of the members of the boat crew led us in some very simple Tai Chi moves. The weather was very nice and it was wonderful to be on the upper deck of the boat, watching the beautiful scenery, and moving my body. Just before our departure from the boat, the chef gave a quick demonstration of how he made the decorations for last night’s dinner.
Here are a few pictures of Halong Bay.
We went back to the bus via the tender. Our first stop is a pearl cultivation farm. They only grow sea pearls here. Fresh water pearls are cheaper because a single oyster can create up to 10 pearls and they have 100% success rate. At the farm they cultivate 3 different types of oysters which give three different colors of pearls. First they harvest membranes from an oyster. The membrane donating oyster is then used for food (we had cooked oysters at dinner last night. I didn’t try them and Rick was asleep). The membrane is cut up and inserted along with a mother of pearl seed into another oyster’s ovary. Oysters have both sex organs so they all have ovaries. The membrane increases the chance of success that a pearl will grow. Some portion of the oysters die as a result of implantation process. Then they are put in racks and put back into HaLong bay. They are pulled out every month and cleaned. The oyster creates a pearl in 1 to 5 years, depending on the type of oyster. Obviously larger pearls take longer to grow. They have about a 40% success rate.
After the tutorial they invited us into their showroom. I ended up getting a mother of pearl bracelet, Happy Birthday to me.
Then we proceeded to on to the humanity center that we stopped in yesterday for lunch. Over lunch Mai talked to me a little bit about divorce in Vietnam. The divorce rate is 20%. It is a patriarchal society so divorce definitely favors the man. A woman may or may not get child support and often it will be difficult for her to remarry. Often the man will remarry.
Then back on the bus where Mai talked about Buddhism in Vietnam. Vietnam practices Mahayana Buddhism and followers believe in the concept of reincarnation. The end of this life is the beginning of the next and whatever we did in this life will be reflected in the next life. There are 6 levels of reincarnation nirvana, holy, human, animals, insects, and hungry ghosts. The spirit stays in the human realm for 49 days during which the family needs to cover all the reflective surfaces in the house so the ghost doesn’t see that their body is missing. Then the spirit goes across a bridge from one life to another. While on the bridge, the spirits drinks forgetting porridge. Deja vu is the result of not drinking all of your forgetting porridge.
I tried to ask question to reconcile the Buddhist beliefs with the ancestor altars, etc but I still don’t understand how they work together. My best guess is that they are merging two belief systems and they don’t merge neatly.
We arrived at the airport and it was all easy. We arrived in Hue at 5:30 and it was 7 before we were checked into our new hotel.
That evening we had dinner in the hotel and celebrated another birthday. Happy Birthday Beverly!