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3,000 Islands of HaLong Bay
Above: Heyward and John with Dragon in background
This was a good day. We departed Hotel #3 at 0800 for a day cruising HaLong Bay. Again, we felt conspicuously wealthy getting out of our chauffeured Lexus and into the 50 ft boat with skipper, mate, steward, cook, and guide all to ourselves. "Ha Long" means "Descending Dragon".
The mythology of these islands is that a giant dragon sent by the gods to help run off the Chinese (and we were afraid of an alliance between the North and that country). In the battle the dragon's tail thrashed around, cutting up the land and making 3,000 islands. The beast, having killed the Chinese, then plunged into the bay to live there as guardian of the people. (Interestingly, Henry Kamm's scholarly book about the people of this country beginning to take responsibility for their problems is titled, "Dragon Ascending".)
This large portion of the Gulf of Tonkin stretches from HaiPhong harbor to China. The islands are steep sided limestone and are with very few exceptions uninhabitable. They are however spectacular pillars, soaring out of the water like dragon's teeth. Our first stop an hour out was Hang Dau Co Island, where we walked through an incredible cavern called, "The Grotto of Heaven".
It is said to have been the staging area for the successful ruse whereby stakes were placed in the Song Duong river near HaiPhong so that the sharpened ends were covered at high tide. The Chinese ships were lured in and were skewered as the tide receded. This feat is the subject of much story and art work throughout the country.
We headed on several hours more, cruising through hundreds of the islands and along Dao Cat Ba (island), where Uncle Ho had a summer place while the people assumed he was out with the troops. We climbed about 100 ft up Dao Titop, named for a Russian Cosmonaut. The cook prepared crabs, giant prawns, a huge fish, veggies, spring rolls, rice, and fruit. As I ate, it occurred to me that it was just east of these islands that the skippers of destroyers Turner Joy and Maddox thought they had been attacked by northern torpedo boats. President Johnson, may he sit on a sharp stick, knew better by morning, but still used the incident to get authority from Congress to carry out military operations against North VietNam. This "Gulf of Tonkin" Resolution was the basis for the entire war afterward. What did not come out at the time was that our two destroyers were in the north of the gulf firing on several of these islands to knock out radar units so they could land southern commandos in the north. How about that? Oh well; 3.5 million people dead, sorry about that.
Inside one of the Dragon's Teeth - Caverns are said to have been used for hospitals during the wars
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