Second day in Halong Bay
Halong bay – day 2
Our boat took is to a floating fishing village. There are many fisherman in this area that live on their boat, with wife, kids and everything they need for their humble fisherman lives on one tiny little boat, offen only covered by a tarp or canvas. On some areas, a dozen or so of these families have gotten together and built a string of floating houses on the water in sheltered bays. Each house is pn a platform which sits on blocks of styrofoam or plastic barrels. These floating villages allows them to help each other out and fish together, eat together and raise their children together. It also offers then safety in numbers when a storm hits the area. They also build nets in the water to farm fish in.
We visited One of these villages, which we learned was medium sized, with maybe 15 – 20 homes, a community shelter and a school for the children. One of the village elders welcomed us and served us tea and some local herbal medicine (one may call it moonshine or hooch). The local medicine makes men strong, which he demonstrated by arm wrestling Mark and Heather.
One platform they showed us was made of a shoddy wooden planks and held a tint, primitive kitchen and the toilet, which naturally, dumped right into the water. At one alarming moment Alyssa’s leg broke through the plank she was standing on and her one leg fell through, into what may or may not have been their toilet tank. She suffered some scratches and an impressive bruise on her thigh, bet I think she’s safe from disease because we used every available soap, ointment, disinfectant and antibacterial spray we could get our hands on as soon as we got back to the boat.
After breaking the fishing village floor, our crew boated us to a beach where they set up tables and umbrellas on the sand and barbecued our lunch for us. We took a swim and did some more kayaking and lounged around the sun deck for the rest of the afternoon. Life is so good.
