After spending some time riding our row boats through the Cong Dam floating village, we continued on to one corner of the inlet to see some of the nearby rock formations. Then we heard our tour guide Smiley calling out from a distance. He was already at one of the house boats, accompanied by a couple of gentlemen.

We all moved towards the house boat and one by one our row boats docked there and we got on the platform. Once everyone assembled there, Smiley introduced us to one of the gentlemen who turned out to be the village mayor. He didn’t speak English, but Smiley translated for him and he welcomed us to his village.

It was a nice visit as the mayor showed us some hospitality and shared with us a little bit about life in the village. But a lot of it seemed to be a little too formal (if not staged), so I wonder how much of that would be the same had we come to the village not as a part of a tourist group like this. It was difficult to tell as I didn’t understand what he said in Vietnamese, and while we went through this, the ladies from the village who rowed our boats sat around at one corner talking with each other, seemed uninterested to having yet another tourist group coming to visit.

On the photo below, you can see Smiley waving at out group. The gentleman on the right was the village mayor who came and meet us.

Another group of tourists that made up our cruise tour group in Ha Long Bay was a group that Smiley identified as Stephanie and friends. Kristi and I came in the same minivan as this group from Hanoi. They were two couples who spoke Malay language mixed with Chinese and English, so I initially thought they were Singaporeans. It turned out that I was not entirely correct.

The group pretty much kept it within themselves and didn’t interact much with everyone else. But one morning as I woke up early to take photos, one of the ladies from the group was also up with her camera to take photos. We talked a little bit, and then I found out about their background.

The lady’s name was Stephanie, and it turned out her friend’s name was also Stephanie. They were there with their husbands for a little R&R trip in Vietnam. They were originally from Malaysia (not Singapore as I originally thought), but then they lived in Melbourne, Australia. Both couples have kids, but they left the kids with the grandparents in Malaysia while they traveled to Vietnam. So it worked out; the parents get their adult time, their kids get to see their grandparents.

You can see on the photo below Stephanie and her group on two row boats as we approached the Cong Dam floating village.

One thing we observed as we rode though the Cong Dam floating village in Ha Long, Bay, Vietnam, was a group of children aged 5-15 years old who appeared to have just finished with their school session for the day. They dispersed from what seemed to be the school to row boats similar to ours, and rode separately to go home to their respective house boat in the village.

I was quite impressed to see how young these kids were and how skillful they were already in rowing their boats. More over, they didn’t wear life vests, so I assume they all know how to swim as well.

As I thought about it more, I wonder what it’s like to live and grow up in the floating village. When these kids get older, I’m sure there would be a time when they would go out on dates with other teenager. What would a date look like? In the US or even in big cities in other countries, you would have teenagers going on outings to eat out, see movie, etc. Teenagers would borrow their parents’ car if they can drive and already have drivers license. If you live in the floating village, would you borrow or get your own boat? Ha Long City is not that close from the village. I suppose you could go on a date that other teenagers in big cities can’t do: go on a romantic boat ride in one of the most picturesque places in the world.

You can see on the photo below some of the young kids who just got out from their school session.

From our boat, we slowly moved towards the Cong Dam floating village. We had several row boats; each boat had two passengers and was driven by a local lady from the village. We moved slowly and in a close cluster so we could hear our guide Smiley occasionally told us about something to note.

As we get closer to the village, Smiley told us to wear the hat given by our boat rower. I wasn’t sure the reason why, if it was part of protocol or simply just to help protect us from getting wet as it started drizzling, but we went ahead and followed the direction.

As we rode our boats slowly through the village and observed the life that’s going on in the village, I couldn’t help not to compare what I saw here to what we saw in the Chong Kneas floating village on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia few days before.

The two floating villages were roughly the same size; Cong Dam might’ve been a little smaller than Chong Kneas. People in both villages lived from fishing, Chong Kneas lived off fresh water fish from the largest lake in Southeast Asia, while Cong Dam had salt water fish from Ha Long Bay. Both started to benefit more from tourism, with Cong Dam having the advantage of being in a very beautiful natural setting of Ha Long Bay. Another big difference was that the people in Ha Long Bay have been there for a long time, while those in Chong Kneas were essentially illegal immigrants from Vietnam who have to compete with the locals.

In either case, I wonder what they think of the tourists who come and visit their village. I would compare that to a situation if somehow the neighborhood where I’ve lived for a long time suddenly becoming a tourist attraction. For some, it might be annoying, while others might welcome that for its potential economic benefits.

I took the photo below as we’re about to approach the village. You can see our boats and the village just in front of us.