Friday, October 23, 2015

Ha Long Bay: Fantasy or Reality


A fantasy, best preserved as such. 



On my second day in Ha Long Bay, ( visited a fishing village, and I got to see the house boats where 72 families live. 
It absolutely killed my fantasy of living on a boat in Vietnam. I’m sure I imagined that line in my future author biography on the inside of a jacket cover. An impressive but brief background followed by the sentence, “She currently lives in a houseboat off the coast of Vietnam.” At the time I thought the idea sounded adventurous and crazy, like me. But having actually seen house boats in Vietnam,  I think I would hardly enjoy life for more than a few days. 
I am a creature of the land. I grew up in Texas after all. I don’t belong on the sea or in the sky. I want to run and walk on the land. There are no accidental meetings on the water. No running into strangers, or recognizing a familiar face in a crowd. There’s no freedom to move your body and run in any direction. I can’t be prisoner on a boat, where life outside the wooden edges tries to destroy me. I can’t live in a world like that, no matter how emerald green the water is.

The neighborhood
Fisherman learn to row with their feet, like how I can drive with me knees

Floating houses, all one room, all the same size


Another closer look at the houses


Neighborhood "streets"

Hanging plant on the dock

Nets for keeping fish

Inside of the school


No comments:

Post a Comment

Rainy Days in the City

 These days we do lunch indoors with the rainy cold weather that Portland winters always bring. This day's lunch was in the lobby of the...