Spellbinding ... Halong Bay.Credit: Manfred Gottschalk/Lonely Planet
Halong Bay looks just like it did in the movie, except Catherine Deneuve is nowhere to be seen, writes Dugald Jellie.
Two days adrift among these cathedrals of rock and I am spellbound by nature's folly. On becalmed waters, in a crook of the South China Sea, I imagine I could float here forever. I think of the sublime. I think of Catherine Deneuve, in white cotton, in this steamy tropical heat.
The 1992 film Indochine, a nostalgic melodrama about love and betrayal in French Indochina, put Halong Bay on the map. Cinema audiences were beguiled by the film's leading lady but enthralled by this ethereal landscape.
Years later, sprawled on a banana lounge on the deck of a Chinese junk, I have a moment of recognition. We've paid $US270 ($300) each for a three-day cruise, a loop of luxury through scenery I come to think of as a hanging garden of Eden. And here in swimming trunks, barefoot, the sense of verisimilitude is immediate: it is as it was on the big screen.
In Indochine, the bay's broken isles are a labyrinth, a place of hiding, full of ancient curses and oriental mystique. It's here that a French naval officer is banished and where, with a young Vietnamese lover, he later seeks refuge.
Our trip to Halong Bay is an escape from all the horns of Hanoi and a lassitude induced by muggy heat and sightseeing. For most travellers, the bay is a side trip from the capital - starting with a minibus hotel pick-up and a three-hour drive to the coast.
Boats depart from the eastern peninsula of Halong City, the closest setting-off point to the bay's UNESCO World Heritage zone, inscribed two years after Indochine's release. The area incorporates about 1600 of the 2000-odd isles strewn about the northernmost mouth of the Red River. It is spectacular from first sight: a wildly fanciful vision of rock pillars and walls that rise like bonsai gardens from the turquoise drink.
Wheelie luggage is trundled down a gangplank on to a stout junk and we feel awfully pleased with ourselves. In Hanoi we had shopped about for tours and opted for a luxury cruise (because my partner is five months' pregnant, because this is a last hurrah), and now find that of the four berths only two are taken.
Days are spent in wonderment of the landscape; paddling into grottoes and undercuts worn away by tides, jumping off the boat, swimming, visiting floating villages, exploring caves by torchlight, shuffling deckchairs and having seafood barbecued for us in exotic locales.
Flying fish skip on the mirrored water at dusk. A full moon rises as big as a watermelon. I wish for it never to end.
Our guide explains the bay's creation myth. Ha Long in local tongue means ''dragon descending'', and it was here that a celestial beast, sent by the Jade Emperor to thwart Chinese invaders, spat out pearls that formed the islands and gouged impenetrable valleys with its flailing tail.
The scientific rationale is that it's a mature karst landscape, notable for its dramatic limestone structures formed by water erosion. Many of the remnant pillars are pencil-thin and most tower 50 to 100 metres from sea level, with craggy vertical cliffs that up close appear every bit like gothic cathedrals.
It seems a powerful yearning; the craving to find in nature a consolation for our mortality. And here with my partner, with our baby in utero, with cold beers at dusk, holiday insouciance and in scenery that looks as if we're in a Chinese silk print, I think maybe I've died and gone to heaven.
But the trip ends, a bill for the drinks tab arrives and an awkward exchange comes when we're obliged to tip the crew. Shangri-la costs 10 per cent more than the advertised rate.
Organised tours of Halong Bay can be arranged through Australian tour companies or travel agencies in Hanoi. Our trip was booked in Hanoi through Buffalo Tours (www.buffalotours.com) and cost $US270 a person twin share on a four-berth boat run by Indochina Junk (www.indochinajunk.com).
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