There is a saying that you should not judge a book by its cover. This refers to the tendency that sometimes we form opinion or judgement on a person or situation based on what we’re familiar with in the past or certain stereotype that we know. During the trip to Ha Long Bay, we were reminded about keeping an open mind and not falling into this way of thinking.

One of the groups in our Ha Long Bay cruise was a young couple named Dmitri and Nina. At the beginning of the cruise, when asked by our guide Smiley, Dmitri introduced himself and his wife Nina as a couple from the Netherlands. While we were on the upper deck of the Dragon’s Pearl on the second day, Dmitri did said hi to us and greeted us in Indonesian. He mentioned that he lived for a couple of years in Jakarta when he was young as his father was a diplomat stationed in Indonesia. He and Kristi had a brief conversation about that, but beyond that, we didn’t interact much with them during the first half of the trip. They pretty much kept it for themselves, though they did occassionally talked with Hannah and Sophie whom they shared the lunch/dinner table with during the cruise.

Dmitri’s wife Nina was pretty quiet most of the time, though I noticed her taking photos of the sceneries around with her Canon DSLR and the recognizable white 70-200 mm L lens. So I thought she might be quite a serious photographer to have and bring that lens on a trip like this.

During the candlelight dinner at the cave, Kristi and I ended up seated at the end of the long dining table, next to Dmitri and Nina. As such, we had some conversations with them through the night. I think it started with Dmitri continuing his conversation with Kristi on what he remembered of Indonesia. While they’re doing so, I had conversation with Nina, and I didn’t quite remember how it started, but we ended up having a good discussion over the dinner and I learned more about this couple and the rich life experience they’ve lived already.

What I learned was that while the couple was officially from the Netherlands, they had actually lived in many places in the world. Dmitri’s father was a diplomat, and as such, he had lived in several countries including Indonesia. He went to school in the United States at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I’m not sure if that’s where he met his wife, but Nina also went to the same school. And after finishing their study, they also worked and lived for some time in Washington, DC, where I live. They were in the middle of a vacation trip in Southeast Asia before heading to Europe and then continuing back to the place where they call home then, Kigali, Rwanda. That was another interesting discussion I had with Nina, where I mentioned about what I learned and experienced during our visit in Cambodia, and how it’s comparable to Rwanda. Both countries had gone through difficult times after civil war and genocide, and now are in the process of rebuilding. Nina said she worked as a consultant to the government of Rwanda to help coming up with ideas on improving the economy of the country. It’s quite a difficult task as the country didn’t have much of natural resources, nor it’s located as strategically as other countries.

After the dinner, when we went back to our cabin to retire for the night, Kristi mentioned her appreciation of this couple and what they do in helping others in developing countries. She also said that before the dinner conversation, she thought Nina seemed to be pretty cold, unapproachable, and the impression changed after we got to know them better. A good lesson to not assume things from what you see on the surface.

I took the photo below during our visit to the Cong Dam floating village earlier that day. Here was Dmitri and Nina on another row boat. You can see him enjoying the scenery while his wife was taking photo with her Canon DSLR.

After we got back to our junk boat from our kayaking excursion and a visit to the island, we spent the rest of the afternoon resting. Our tour guide Smiley only told us to be ready for dinner by 7 pm.

At 7 pm, it’s already dark outside, and it looked like we’re the only junk boat that remained moored near the island. The other boats that also came to visit during the afternoon had left. It was pitch dark outside, except in the distance we could see some lights from the island. After gathering all of the passengers, Smiley asked us to board the tender to head towards the island for dinner. What was mentioned in the itinerary for the trip was a ‘BBQ dinner at the island.’ There was not much detail beyond that to describe what it would be. I suppose it was meant to be somewhat a surprise.

After arriving at the island, we followed the illuminated path up towards the cave. Some of the guests had already visited the cave in the afternoon. We didn’t go then because we were barefooted after kayaking and didn’t want to go up on what looked like a rocky path into a possibly dark cave and possibly hurt our feet.

The experience visiting a cave is always interesting. I think it’s because you’re going into an environment that is completely different than what we’re used to, and it sparks imagination about what might be inside the dark and potentially confined space. Many of the rocky islands in Ha Long Bay were hollow inside, and some were large enough that people could visit. There are some of the islands that were well-known enough and open to public that most Ha Long Bay cruise experience include a visit to one of these caves.

In our case, along with the idea of going to the ‘off the beaten path’ away from other tourists, the Indochina Junk Company took a different approach in providing such experience. Smiley told us that they found the private island with the cave and purchased it from its previous ‘owner’; it was home for a fisherman for years. Apparently in addition to those who live in the floating villages in the Bay, there were others who inhabited some of the hundreds of rocky islands in Ha Long Bay. I thought that must be an interesting experience to live in such a natural shelter; I suppose that’s what people did before the advent of technology for constructing homes like what we have today.

As we walked into the cave, we got to see some of the interesting stalagmite and stalactite formations that lined up the cave walls. They had done a good job placing lightings to illuminate the interesting formations. The one on the photo below looked like a giant jellyfish.

Toward the end of our kayaking session in Ha Long Bay, we saw on a distance another group of kayaks coming from a different direction. Clearly we’re not alone at this part of Ha Long Bay. We kept a little distance to avoid the kayaks colliding with each other, but both groups seemed to be heading to the same direction. I was too busy to keep our kayak moving straight given our rudder problem, so I kept on rowing until Kristi told me to look up. We saw in the distance in front of us several junk boats including a couple of them that looked like ours moored near an island, and all of the kayaks seemed to be going towards the beach on the little island.

We navigated past the junk boats and reached the sandy beach on the island. A couple of folks helped us getting to the shore; I recognized some of them were our crew from Dragon’s Pearl junkboat. It turned out that the island was a private island owned by the Indochina Junk Co., and all of the boats around us were their boat. The island was one of the stops for all of the boats as it provided them with a chance to relax on the beach a little bit, as well as to visit a cave on the island.

Kristi and I ended up walking around a little bit on the island to check out the scenery. It was low tide time, so we could see some of the rocks exposed. That’s a good thing, as we were not wearing our sandals at that point and could’ve hurt our feet walking on those rocks.

After spending some time there, the crew called us to get on the tender that would take us back to our junk boat so we could rest a little bit and get cleaned up before dinner time.

The photo below was taken as we’re approaching the island. You can see the junk boats moored close to the beach.

After a hearty lunch, we continued our second day experience in Ha Long Bay with another session of kayaking. Our tour guide Smiley said that it would be a longer trip than the first session. Instead of going somewhere and then coming back to the junk boat, on this second trip we were dropped off a location, and from there we would follow our junk boat from a distance as we’re heading to our next stop in Ha Long Bay.

This time around we knew a little better on how to row and steer our kayak after practising in the first session the day before. However, the water was not as calm as the day before, so we had to work harder on keeping the pace with the group. After going for a while, we noticed that somehow the kayak was more difficult to keep moving straight; it kept veering to the right. I thought it was simply because of the wind or the waves that we had to fight, until one of the other kayakers came next to us and told us that our rudder was down to one side, so that’s why it kept veering off and we couldn’t go straight. The line for controlling the rudder was broken, so we couldn’t really adjust it or take the rudder off ourselves. The other kayakers were nice enough to help reach out rudder and manually flipped it off so it’s not engaged and we could go straight again. That worked well for a while, until the group started moving fast again and going through rougher waters. At that point, somehow the rudder engaged again and we couldn’t control it, so for the rest of the trip we had to put extra effort to keep correcting the bearing of the kayak.

The photo below was taken during a break in the middle of the kayak ride. Smiley was nice enough to offer to take photos of us from his kayak. You can see the little white piece at the stern of our kayak — that the little rudder that made us put extra effort to steer the kayak during this ride.