Look for Me There by Luke Russert

Author:Luke Russert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Horizon
Published: 2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

HẠ LONG BAY

I seek out some beauty. Something lighter than a painful prison. Hạ Long Bay, a five-hour trek from Hanoi, is a place I’ve wanted to visit since I saw a poster of mossy islands in pristine waters at a Vietnamese restaurant when I was a kid.

I’m on the top deck as an old junk boat trudges on through the calm green waters. Around the boat, women in shade hats with bamboo oars push along their narrow canoes, which are packed with fish and grain. Rock formations spring up from the sea like tree stumps in a green grass field. Many are covered in moss. Birds perch at their tips. The topography identifies as Southeast Asia. There is an eerie-quiet vibe here, as though a monster lurks underneath, ready to pounce. The sun is so hot, but the guide says no swimming. Bacteria levels this time of year can be high.

The sun begins to set. Green water bleeds into an orange sky at dusk. The tiny islands we passed earlier appear dark, nefarious, and forbidding. Dinner is a rowdy affair, made all the wilder by the fact that the boat offers no Wi-Fi, so the boat’s group of world travelers must, you know, talk to each other. There are Americans and Aussies and Turks and Qataris and maybe seven other nations represented on the boat. Over cheap French red wine and cheaper Vietnamese beer, well lubricated, I propose the world’s worst toast: “There are small ships and tall ships and ships that sail the sea. But the true ships are friendships, and may they always be!” From there, the conversation unravels into countless stories of travel. Sojourns through Oman. An ankle break on a scooter in Thailand. After dinner the smokers walk out on the main deck. Everyone follows. The reflection of the moonlight spreads out like a white bedsheet over the bay. Smoke hangs in the air; there is not much wind. Sounds from other anchored boats skip across the surface as the clock approaches midnight. The bay feels alive. Most everyone is having one of those conversations to solve all the problems in the world. Without Wi-Fi, forced interaction has spurred a camaraderie and togetherness. That night the effect of Wi-Fi’s power comes into being for me. If we live only within our own curated digital worlds, control our exposure, and limit what is culturally comfortable, we are not living in a real world at all.

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