Halong Bay.

In the little minivan I learn that our entire expedition throughout Halong Bay will be spent entirely in the company of the fifteen misfits with whom I'm presently stranded; they are young and old and we are of course the sole Americans. Nobody says a goddamn word and I worry a bit about how we'll endure the next three days at sea with this poorly-paired batch of strangers. We transfer from land to our boat, the S.S. Whatever, and shove off into the South China Sea.

Our first stop after settling into our respective cabins is a series of sea caves; you disembark at the island and hike along a little guided tour. Our guide narrates the experience, lending silly superstitious anthropocentrisms to stalactite formations and what not. As I would rather hear a more scholarly meditation on these geological wonders, any proper account of their formation, we elect to go about on our own and secede from the group. I suppose I am bothered by the fact that the denizens of nearly every place to which one travels expect one to take an active interest in the native culture, in their stupid customs and beliefs. I have no wish to observe some half-hearted presentation of any inane traditional dance. I would rather be drinking than listening to some mumbo-jumbo tale of how the volcano was formed from the tears of the Great Mother. It is not enough that you shell out thousands to lie in peace upon their beaches; you must also visit the sacred sites and endure their empty blather and juvenile cosmologies. I look at the temples and the ruins and I'm glad that they are ruined; they were repositories of bad ideas and so earned their extinction. Maybe someday tour groups will be led throughout the ruins of Hollywood and will be told of the things that were sacred among our people. They will be shown the crumbling facade of The Gap and Carl's Jr. and T.G.I. Friday's and they will stand there obsequiously and speak in little whispers about the resonance and energy of the place. "You could definitely feel a presence", one will say. But I digress.

Once we sat anchor in the bay, things changed abruptly. It is remarkable to witness the slow cohesion of strangers, and how effective alcohol serves as a catalyst for this kind of very sincere bonding. Alcohol is a wonderful thing. It strips us of so many suppositions and proprieties and identities. Little alcoholic eddies of affinity begin to form in twos and threes across the deck, and things begin to get comfortable. After a number of drinks we dive into the bay laughing, and I'm immediately alarmed by the strength of the current. After an exquisite dinner and several more drinks, it is decided that I am to be the icebreaker; the first to sing karaoke. I select "Ebony & Ivory" and I fucking deliver; the older German women are quite enamored of me and my singing, and insist that I pursue it professionally. I tell them that I'm several steps ahead of them, that I'm rather famous in the States and well on the way to becoming the next Hassellhoff. I made out with a sixty year old woman, sang "Stairway to Heaven" in its entirety, and it's there that my memory of the evening fortunately terminates.

We awoke best of friends, and began drinking immediately; eight of us, the best of us, were to defect from the group, and sail on to Cat Ba Island. We boarded a smaller vessel and docked at the National Park, and spent a few hours cycling through the rain forest. We then kayaked out among the limestone karsts; it's easy to get lost out in this dizzying labyrinth of spires jutting up from the sea. At some points the view of the surrounding karsts was so consuming and so overwhelming that I felt I might just go ahead and die, and I began to hyperventilate, and then paddled harder in a single direction. I later dove into the sea off the coast of Monkey island; minutes later, I stood in the middle of the ocean, next to the boat on a limestone crag just beneath the surface. I informed our guide, also named Kang, that I'd escaped death or paralysis by a margin of about twenty inches, and that diving here is probably not the wisest of ideas. He laughed and smiled, which is what most Vietnamese do when they've no fucking clue what you're saying.

We dock at Cat Ba Island, and spend the evening drinking together, as a group. We effectively assume control of the hotel's restaurant, displacing the other patrons with our drunken ramblings and loud music. They are a two-fisted, foul-mouthed batch of pro-Labor Brits and Aussies and we get along famously. They give me shit for being American and I tell them to go fuck themselves and that football is for pussies, and so on. I also tell them that I am for the war in Iraq, and that a further incursion into Iran sounds just fine to me. This opinion is greeted with much booing and is of course just a bullshit fabrication, but I feel duty-bound to disagree with nearly everyone, and particularly with groups that chant some horseshit mantra in unison, even if that mantra is probably right on. Such is my burden. We later migrate down the strip to another beachside bar, and the mission continues. I boast of my ass-kicking abilities as a pool player, and then realize mid-game that I can no longer walk. But neither can anyone else.

We receive the exceedingly painful seven A.M. wakeup call and rendezvous with the group; they are already drinking. I am still severely inebriated, but after a bit of arm-twisting I concede that it would be better to stay drunk than to endure their jabs hungover all day at sea. And so the party resumes, and we get closer than ever, and it is reflexively assumed by all that we will remain friends for life. Eight hours later, Jasmin and I are the first to be dropped at our hotel in Hanoi; being drunk, we neglected to properly exchange information. We promise to shower and again come together at some pub to take in the rugby match. We passed out immediately and slept for ten hours and never saw them again.

Hoi An

10/21/07