But, then, that’s not his job, and cultural education is not the point of the Emeraude, which is there to offer splendid scenes from a privileged perch, with lounge chairs, soft jazz, and a bartender always on hand. The drinks are chilled, the cabins cool, the dining room fully sheltered from the elements. As I stare across the water, I can make out fishing villages floating near the shore.
We pass a cluster of rainbow-colored boats that look more like baskets than homes. I am intrigued, but the Emeraude doesn’t go near them. Instead, villagers row to us in little boats of wood and rattan, bearing coral and shells that they sell for $1 to $5 apiece. They lift their arms to the Emeraude’s deck, where passengers stand at the railing with cameras in hand, scrambling to capture the scene.
Later that night, the buffet boasts local crab, shrimp, squid, and fish, some of it good, some of it bland and overdone. Far more enticing to me is the panoply of goodies not readily found in Asia: Norwegian smoked salmon, French cheese, chocolate cake, Chilean wine. I indulge in second helpings, while fishermen occasionally drift into view through the restaurant’s portholes.
By early morning, I can’t sleep. I hit the upper deck just as the first dabs of light cross the sky. I am all alone, watching thousands of tiny fish flying from the water, chased by something higher on the food chain. Crickets chirp and seabirds sing. In the distance, I hear the sputtering motor of a fishing boat. That motor is the sound of a waterway in the morning anywhere in Southeast Asia. This is the hour when villages and nature wake, an hour that inspires me. I finally feel attuned to what is out there.
And yet I feel a nagging lack of inspiration. I’d rather be in one of those villages way out there in the distance, bones aching on a floating wooden floor, knees bent, struggling through my atrocious Vietnamese, eating food from the bay. I want to get right down to the lifeblood of this fishing world.
So when we dock in Halong City again, I seek out John Gray’s Sea Canoe, an American-run operation with a string of accolades for its eco-friendly adventures on water. Before too long, I am setting off from their boat in my own canoe. My guide, Nguyen Khac Tien, paddles me into pitch-black island caves, following the current straight through to sunny interior lagoons. These hidden phongs are full of life, inaccessible from the ocean at high tide; imagine each island as a cruller doughnut of limestone mountains, with a blue-green lagoon in the hole.
Tien leads me to the “lagoon of a thousand jellyfish.” The invertebrates swim toward patches of sunlight, and I pick one up. Its epidermis quivers in my hand, harmless. These are too small to eat, Tien says, but the tiny crabs we see on nearby rocks are food for locals. Inside another cave, he points to a rope hanging from rocks, where fishermen tie up for midday naps. In the cooler hours, little houseboats nestle in the nooks of these islands while men and women do their daily chores.
In the late afternoon, Tien takes me to visit Hung, the one-handed fisherman. His home is in a floating village called Van Gia. Two days after Washi has passed, men and women hammer on boats and houses, patching leaks and fixing gouges. Giant lights adorn each boat and, at night, jolt the sea with brightness. We paddle through around 4 p.m., which is dinnertime here for most families, who are gathering around pots and bowls on the upper decks. Hung sits with his wife and teenage son on a plastic sheet covering their wooden floor. He invites us into the circle and shoves a couple of whiskey cups our way. It is the first rice wine I’ve had this trip, offered with classic Vietnamese hospitality.
They all sit cross-legged with their toes resting beside aluminum pots of food, a dinner of rice with dried and fried sardines, sour fish soup with green papaya, and ca duoi, a small ocean fish that sells for about 14 cents a pound. It’s cheaper than squid, which costs eight times as much. “If the squid is still alive, we fry it or bake it with nothing. If not, we fry it with celery,” Hung says. But even that is a treat, because he can’t always afford the food he catches. He can’t afford a plot of land, like some villagers have. He can’t even afford a floating house, so they live on their squid boat, as many families do. “If we’re lucky, we can earn a hundred dollars a night,” Hung says. “But that may happen once a month. Often we come away with nothing.”
As we speak, a young woman rows through the village in a boat shaped like a huge bamboo tray. She’s selling cigarettes, beer, candy, fruit, crackers—the local version of the neighborhood 7-Eleven. In Van Gia, kids row themselves to school; they learn to swim before they learn to walk. They eat from the waters around them; everything else arrives on floating stores. There are no sit-down meals at restaurants. Most villagers rarely sit at a table or set foot on shore. Legs grow wobbly with time. “I go to land about once a month,” Hung says. “I don’t walk very well.” His life, like that of his neighbors, is firmly anchored in the sea.
It’s a life, a job, that has cost him plenty. Twenty years ago, before he could afford a boat and net, he fished using dynamite. It’s illegal, but people do it. Hung made a living that way. Until he blew off his right hand.
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