vietnam: the world’s never felt so small

Back on the boat we managed to coerce the captain to drop anchor away from the other boats for the night so we could enjoy the peace and quiet a bit of solitude might provide from the obnoxious tourists aboard the other boats. We did stop away from the rest of the boats, but not quite far enough away. As everyone was standing on the roof of the boat contemplating whether or not to jump the whopping 20 or 25 feet, I got a running start from the other side of the boat and launched myself into the warm night air landing in even warmer water. Besides feeling like I was swimming in pee, it was extremely salty, so I became incredibly buoyant. I’m a terrible back floater usually but in this bay I could lounge around for hours on end without so much as an arm underneath me to keep pushing myself up. A few others followed in suit and finally jumped in, most of which were doing the stereotypical-one arm over their head, the other hand plugging their nose-dive, and a couple even screamed the whole way between roof and water. We all jumped and swam around for a solid 20 minutes when a couple of the people we were trying to stay away from came swimming over and asked if they could jump off of our roof. I assured them it would be fine, so they climbed up and jumped off, well, two of the three jumped off, the third one climbed down because she got scared. They were around my age and had American accents, so when the guy jumped off he swam over and we started talking. We rifled through the obligatory questions, “where are you from” being the key one here. As it turns out, when we cycled through the country, state, county and city that we were born and raised in, we both grew up in Huntington Beach, CA and knew a couple of the same people. I was absolutely blown away. I know it’s a “small world”, but holy shit. I was swimming in a bay half way around the world and I run into probably the only other Huntington Beach native in the country at the time. We spent a few minutes treading water, talking about our respective purposes in the country, mine, of course, was just to see it whereas he was working for the American embassy in Hanoi and he was living there for six months. He offered to buy me a drink when I came back through Hanoi, which I was fully entertaining the idea of, and then I got out of the water to climb up and jump off again.
Growing up in Huntington Beach was interesting. There are a great number of really cool people I grew up with who I still hang with on a regular basis; my very best friend is from Huntington Beach, however, the cool ones are definitely the exception rather than the rule. There is a very large concentration of “bros” in Huntington who have a bad reputation for being obnoxious, loud, pious, and tactless, driving raised white trucks with “SRH” stickers on them, wearing flat-billed baseball hats turned 45 degrees to one side with oversized dickies shorts, black socks pulled up and puffy skate shoes despite the fact that the vast majority of them can’t skateboard to save their lives. I’ve spent the better part of my youth doing everything in my power to not be a part of this uniquely grotesque subculture, and am perplexed every time I run into one of them by their demeanor, their lack of appreciation for things other than fake boobs and lifted trucks, and their rhetoric.
The Malay import had a very comprehensive appreciation for all things Western, including a lot of the slang and jokes used profusely in my hometown. He, like myself, was not a fan of the aforementioned type of people, and jabbed countless jokes at me about being American, especially being Californian, albeit his admittance that I was by no means a stereotypical Orange County guy.
That said, The Malay and I are standing on the roof of the boat, getting ready to jump, when the three roof jumping mooches from across the way announce that they will be swimming back over to their boat now, so we say farewell, and as a parting act of idiocy, my fellow guy from OC sticks a fist up in the air and yells, “Later man! Represent H.B. bro!”, which he said with absolute conviction, like, he isn’t just from H.B, he is FROM H.B. and it literally summed him up in one statement for me and innately placed him in the demographic which I just described. I was in shock for a second that he so quickly lost my respect, and I gave him a, “Will do, bro” from which he didn’t catch even five percent of my sarcasm. As the three of them swam off, I hung my head with shame and my Malay buddy nudged me and mimicked the guy, “Yeaaaaahh, H.B. bro!” Again, he had a very in-depth understanding of the jokes and slang from my part of the world, so he caught on to how shitty the call was. Having just spent the last few hours trying to convince this guy and the two Australian girls on board that all Californians aren’t like the kids in the show The OC, the one guy we run into in the middle of the ocean in Vietnam totally proves my point wrong.

the vietnamese jurassic park

Halong Bay is gorgeous. It is a massive body of water with nearly 2,000 uninhabited islands that look straight out of Jurassic Park with their entire surface area covered by unnavigably thick forest. The islands are very tall, protruding out of the water, sometimes several hundred yards high, and not much more in diameter. The Vietnamese legend about them says something of a dragon coming through and doing something and the islands are the spikes on his tail popping out of the water; I sort of tuned out while the captain was telling us the story, he told us the story before I found out she was fifteen.
We spent a couple hours slowly putting along through the labyrinth of islands, some of them less than 20 yards from the boat at times, our massive pirate ship, then we dropped anchor somewhere among them and took some kayaks for a spin. The Belgian transplant and I got along really well, he was in the computer business so we talked work mostly, so we grabbed a couple kayaks and headed off around a couple islands together. We found a cool island with a big cave on one side of it and beached our kayaks on the little secluded beach leading into the cave. There were bats in said cave, it was a bit creepy. After getting lost for a while we managed to find our way back to the boat where we got back on board and were told we were headed to the largest cave to be found on all of the islands. The cave has a name, but I suppose it’s irrelevant.
The boat pulls into a very small harbor type area where upwards of ten boats were docked at what appeared to be the base of the cave. As soon as we got within a visible distance, I could tell it was going to suck because of all of the souvenir shops lining the dock and the stairs leading up to the cave’s entrance. Our guide was going on and on in 10% understandable English, telling us things I still don’t know about the cave. It looked less like a natural marvel and more like a now defunct ride at Disneyland that was shut down 20 years ago. Granted there were impressive stalagmites and stalactites growing out of the ground as well as the roof, but they were all strategically and artificially lit by orange, green, yellow, blue, and red flood lights to give it a serious rave vibe and it took every ounce of potentially natural beauty out of it. The rudimentary exchange between the guide and myself was quite comical however. Encountering the same thing as happened back in Thailand, the young guide was itching to talk about sex, so as we’re walking through the cave, and I’m trying not to hate it for it’s artificiality, Quang pulls me aside, and under his breath says, “Meestah Daveed Willem, what these rock luk lie?” I looked at them and pondered, “Well, Quang, it slightly resembles a penis.” As though he’d just won the lottery, he was overjoyed with a massive smile and exclaimed, “YES! Hahahahahahahahaha, you ah rie!”