It is now Thursday morning at 6 am and I am on the upper deck of our boat. It is quite dark outside. We have been anchored overnight in the middle of a secluded bay that is almost totally surrounded by these karsts. Together with our boat in the bay are another 6 or 7 boats similarly anchored. Last night we only saw their lights but now that it is becoming light, you can see them clearly.
I got up to witness and photograph sunrise but we are totally covered in clouds. Daylight is breaking but the perfect cloudless sky that we had last evening is gone....guess I will have to try some shots of overcast vistas this morning. It is totally quiet and peaceful here. The crew and my fellow passengers are all still sleeping. On occasion you can hear a fishing boat passing by in the distance and every now and then you hear the boat's generator humming. You definitely hear the chirping of birds from every direction. The sea is still totally calm. There is a gentle movement of the boat as it moves back and forth while still tethered to its anchor.
In the next hour, there will be a flurry of activity as the crew on this boat and all the other boats in the bay awake and begin preparing their boats for the day ahead. Breakfast will be prepared and served and then we will set sail for the rest of our journey. I had thought of davening on the upper deck, but I think that if any of the crew awoke and saw me they would freak out...they think we are strange as it is, but this would be over the top....so even tho it would be very spiritual to daven in this amazing setting, I think I will head down to our room in the next few minutes and daven there.
After davening, Sandy went into the kitchen to supervise breakfast. The menu is fresh watermelon juice, plain egg omelette, egg omelette with tomatoes and onions, and stir fried cabbage with tomatoes, onion and garlic.
By the time we finished breakfast, we had arrived at the fishing village.
We transferred by tender to a small bamboo boat (one for each couple) that was being rowed by a local female villager. She must have rowed us thru the calm waters for about 45 minutes. She was a very small woman but she must have been quite strong. We asked Zhee how much we should tip her and he said 15000 dong or 75 cents would be sufficient.
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| This picture is upside down...shows you how clear and calm the waters were |
There are 70 people living in this village. Each family lives on a floating house. They used to live on an actual floating boat, but now they have small homes of 100 square feet built on a raft. All electrical power is by battery and they run their tv off the battery. There is cell reception so they all have cell phones.
They have a local floating makolet where they do their shopping and the 30 or 40 children in the village go to school in the two room floating schoolhouse. Teachers come from the mainland and stay there for a week at a time.
Our next stop in the bamboo boat was at the cultured pearl farm which is part of the fishing village. They demonstrated how they take the oysters out of the water, open them up, insert a mother of pearl and then return them to pools where they sit for 2 years, after which a full size pearl has been formed in the oyster. It was fascinating.
Obviously attached was a pearl shop displaying many types of pearl necklaces and earrings and other jewellery. We were now on our way back to the boat.
By this time the weather had turned partly sunny and very pleasant. We returned to the boat and were asked to pack our bags and vacate our rooms so that they could prepare the rooms for the next set of guests.
Fran and I were now invited down to the kitchen to help prepare the farewell lunch. When we asked what we would be having, they told us we would have whole steamed fish as the main course with sides of rice, finely cut veggies and stir fried morning glory. We asked which pot would be used for steaming the fish and they pointed to this very large pot, which was definitely not ours. We told them they could not use it and would have to use the smaller one that we had brought. This meant that they could not steam it whole and that is what they used.
It is good to have a mashgiach around and for them to understand that they can do nothing without us present. The result was very good.
Their seasonings consist of chilli, garlic, ginger, and salt. The veggies that they used today were soy root, seasoned with lime sugar and salt. The stuffing in the fish was shiitake mushrooms, ginger, green onion, shallots and garlic and onion. It was cooked with water which was thickened at the end with flour. It was all very delicious. Again he sculpted a flower out of a red chilli pepper which decorated the fish platter.We had now arrived in port and the crew once again collected to thank us for coming. We gave them the recommended tip and thanked them for a very fine experience.
This was truly a "do not miss" kind of experience. Highly recommended if you can make it to this part of the world. We were blessed with good weather...not sure what it would look like in total fog, clouds, or heavy rains...
The kosher experiment worked out well. Our recommendations if we were to ever do this again would be to have more cooking oil, more disposable plates, and a couple of mixing bowls.
Other than that, it was a very successful experiment.
We then boarded our van and are now heading back to Hanoi for last night in Vietnam.
Hope all are well...all the best
Fran and David
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