Where the Dragon Descends

Here it is said that the Jade Emperor called out to dragons to help the land fight off its enemies, and those dragons came, brought victory, and never left. Each island is either a scale of a dragon, or an emerald dropped by one and then turned magically into land. My photos are thoroughly inadequate.


Halong Bay was too spectacular for the time we spent there. The bay includes something like 6000 islets, from rocks that jut out of the sea to full blown islands complete with potential Bond villain lairs and vast cave systems. Stories abound; Halong Bay is seen in The Creator, as well as Kong; Skull Island and of course the Vietnam Top Gear Special. If I ever go again, I'll try to get a private charter boat to less visited islands... but yes, my eyes saw a dream neither words nor camera can convey; if someone told me they had seen a pterodactyl hovering over the waters, I wouldn't have been at all surprised.



The town has a strong though not exclusive emphasis on Chinese visitors, if my appraisal of hotel interiors is anything to go by. But the Chinese govt appears to allocate where its folk can travel, and relations are not at their most amicable between Vietnam and China. What with building dams that affect the Mekong river which in turn impacts harvests throughout adjoining countries, and trying to drill for oil in Vietnamese waters, China is not presenting as an easy neighbour. Vietnam does not look to Beijing but to Singapore as an example of what it wants for itself, nor does it stay quiet about resource grabs attempted by the Chinese government. The result has been a sudden dearth of Chinese tourists in Halong Bay. What China appears to be demonstrating now is how its absence can affect Vietnam's economy. I hope Vietnam's government recognises the dangers of putting all eggs in one basket and starts touting the extraordinary beauty of this place to other potential tourists. There was no evidence of silly Sinophobia, but no delusions about the Chinese govt's ambitions either.

Meanwhile, we ate the most delicious fish broth I have ever tasted. And I looked out for Kong on the skyline, though I saw never a hint of him. Perhaps he's wandering one of the lost worlds to be found through the portals of Halong Bay.

White Horse Dream

Dreamed of a man with a white horse last night. Somehow I thought he was a time traveller.

The Night Train or A Tale of Three Cancers

I've mentioned here before that my favourite Chanel advert, indeed one of my favourite adverts of all time, is the one called The Night Train starring Audrey Tautou going to Istanbul via the Orient Express. A stranger passes her in a corridor on the train, and is instantly captivated by her irresistible scent. By contrast, my night train experience comprised of a strange woman showing me her nawks. I do not understand the karma of my life but never deny there's a sense of humour in the Great Accountant's dealings.

Safe to say that a Vietnamese Night Train is an experience never forgotten. If one is going to join it at all, Hanoi is the best place to jump on, being its starting point and therefore a guarantee of clean bunks, but in any case a sleeping bag liner is a good idea. The four person bunk rooms seemed perfectly OK and bug free though this last might be difficult to maintain in the wet season. Sinks and washing basins were clean enough, the toilets are neither worse nor better than train toilets on an average train anywhere, but none of these are ensuite, so one's own paper is a good idea, and skirts/shorts/ trainers are better than sandals/floor skimming trousers. The only real issue is that the bunks are not made for tall wide people, and lots of luggage can make a cabin a very tight squeeze.

We were sharing with two other members of the tour, and here's where my distinctly non Audrey Tautou moment occurred.

Everyone had made their introductions, we had been in each others company for something like two days, and already the woman with the Jolly Hockey Sticks voice had been talking to us about her recent breast cancer surgery. She grew more avid when she learned that two of us also had this diagnosis. Of the three, I am the one who has been on medication the longest. The third of us had received her diagnosis two weeks prior to the tour, while the loud booming lady had learned in December. Her surgeon had suggested she get it whipped out almost immediately and she agreed. She was up for talking about the whole thing and brought the subject up repeatedly, a lady of great compassion but less acute awareness, for anyone looking could see that the third of us was a)at least 20 years younger and b)terrified, wanting to escape the shock, to be far away from it all. She had come to the other side of the world and here it was again, forcing a way into her attention! Booming lady reassured her that we could talk about cancer any time, that we could almost travel together as a kind of mutual therapy group, I tempered this by saying that while always ready to listen, it was OK to focus on other things too, to close down conversation and say 'I don't want to talk about this now' if need be. Lady 3 seemed to relax at this, safe in the knowledge that she wasn't being corralled into a coterie of Weird Sisters treating this extraordinary place as set dressing to a play with personal trauma in the starring role.

Perhaps because the Great Accountant has that special sense of humour, our 4 berth room included both of these ladies, myself and R. When lady 3 and R were off wandering down the train, booming woman told me she wanted to show me something, and apropos of nothing, took off her top revealing her chest and scar in entirety. I didn't want this at all, but had no time to protest.

'It's nothing you see?' She said while I nodded. Inside I was screaming. It sure looked like something to me, and two trains of thought filled my head at the same time. One was that her jackanapes of a doctor should have given her more time to think and more options for counselling. She was talking to me and she would talk to others like me because maybe there was no-one else to hear her. She never glimpsed my dismay and talked on, convinced, I hope, that she was doing good, while I was convinced that I was doing good. Also came the knowledge of what would work for me and what wouldn't, what I could handle and what was beyond me, the good fortune I had in so much kind support. Remember, it's not nothing, came my inner voice, respect yourself, respect your body. She is talking like this because her doctor/surgeon, her upbringing, maybe even her preference insists that it is a nothing. But no-one bares their tits to a stranger on a train over a nothing. It is a something.

The return of the others meant she put her breasts away, and I could lay back in my sleeping bag, head close to the window, rocked by the rhythyms of the train as the night gave way and the stars and mountains passed us by.