We were up early today because we were leaving Hanoi and going to HaLong bay, a Unesco world heritage site. As we were leaving Hanoi we saw many roadside shops with huge containers of orchids that are being sold for the lunar new year. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a picture but here’s a picture I downloaded of the type of flowers they were selling.
Along the way we stopped at the Doc La war cemetery. It contained graves men who fought in one of the wars, mostly what we call the Vietnam war but what the Vietnamese call the American war. There are many such cemeteries around the country and they are for people who fought on the North Vietnamese side. Mai asked us to be respectful and speak to the spirit before we took a picture of the grave. We were supposed to introduce ourselves, tell the spirit where we are from, ask to take a picture and wish the spirit to rest in peace. Here is a picture of a grave.
Notice it has a hole in the stone; this is so the spirit can get in and out. Next there were 3 or 5 cups on the tomb. One for sky, earth, and human. They also had a pot to hold incense sticks. As I mentioned before they give food and drink offerings and before you can remove the offering to eat it you must burn incense. The marker listed the name, date of birth, date the person went into the army, date the person died and their hometown. It’s not usual for families to request the remains back so they can be buried closer to the other ancestors.
Also in the cemetery, there were a few heroic mothers, women who lost 2 or more sons to a war.
After Mai showed us the tomb, she talked to cemetery “manager”. This a volunteer who looks after the graves. He was a soldier in the border war and he feels that it is his honor to look after these graves. We went inside where there was an altar dedicated to Ho Chi Minh. Mai lit some incense for him.
Northern Vietnam has a different burial tradition than Southern Vietnam. In the south, they just bury the person and it’s done. In the north after the person dies the family consults with the local shaman on the best dates for the first burial. The person is buried in a shallow grave for three years and at the end of that time only bones are left. The body is dug up by a younger male family member and the bones are retrieved. They are repackaged and reburied in the final grave (See Jan 6 for picture of terracotta caskets). The shaman is also consulted on the date for the second burial. Because there is more time to plan, the whole family comes to the second burial and there is a big celebration. This is not the case for the graves at the war cemetery.
We got back on the bus and Mai went through Vietnamese history (I’m not going to recount it here. If you are interested check out wikipedia). Our next stop was the Humanity Center which is a site for victims of agent orange to live, make, and sell their handicrafts. They showed us how they make lacquer paintings and embroidered art. We didn’t see anything we liked so we didn’t get anything there.
We continued our journey and finally arrived at HaLong Bay. The weather was overcast and not particularly great for seeing the bay. We boarded a tender and were taken to our boat where we were served lunch.
After lunch we had some free time. Rick promptly curled up in the bed and took a nap.
We reconvened at 4 to meet with Mai and she gave us information about HaLong Bay.
The name HaLong means “descending dragon”. It has an area of around 1,553 km2 (600 sq mi), including 1,969 islets, most of which are limestone. The limestone in this bay has gone through 500 million years of formation through differing conditions and environmental impacts. The evolution of the islet in this bay has taken 20 million years under the impact of the tropical wet climate.
Next we (Rick stayed on the boat and was still napping) went to surprising cave via the tender. The cave had three large chambers. Here are a few pictures.
We got back to the boat and had a little time before dinner. Rick was down for the night. We had many dinner courses. The presentation for the food was amazing. As you can see from the pictures below we had fish under a net. The net was made from a fresh carrot. We also had a dish that was decorated with a fish made out of carrots.
After dinner Mai made an announcement that someone in our group is turning 21 today and guess what! It was me. Forever 21. They brought out a birthday a cake and sang to me. A crew member carved a watermelon for me. Mai also gave me a card that everyone had signed. It was a very nice way to end my birthday.
