Photographer’s Notebook: A Return to Vietnam

There are a few places on Earth where a photograph fails to convey the scale and magnificence of the location. One is the Grand Canyon. Another is Ha Long Bay in Vietnam — a magical, otherworldly archipelago for many miles, with aquamarine waters contrasted against 2,000 towering limestone islands.

I was born in Vietnam and spent nearly all my childhood outside the U.S., including in Southeast Asia. In November I visited the region to scope out a possible documentary.

Most everything in Vietnam is inexpensive: meals, lodgings, getting around. An abundant and delicious dinner can be $2 to $4. A bottle of cold beer or a cup of rich Vietnamese coffee is about $1.25. That may not be as surprising if you know that the average Vietnamese earns about $3,600 a year.

I opted to visit a less-traveled part of Ha Long Bay known as Bai Tu Bay, ferried on a boat that mirrored a Chinese junk from few centuries ago. The handful of passengers hailed from Germany, France, New Zealand, Switzerland, Lake Tahoe and Missouri. It intrigued me to learn that the six people who were from Germany (Bavaria, Berlin and the German part of Switzerland) each spoke such different dialects that they could barely communicate with one another, even though Germany is about the size of New Mexico.

The quiet and stillness of the bay was quite a contrast to the whirlwind of Hanoi, with its millions of coruscating motor scooters, often with a family of four perched atop one of them, in a universe with its own traffic laws. There are few crosswalks or traffic lights, and scarcely room on sidewalks. You forge ahead as if plunging into a school of fish.

I was blessed to visit the Ninh Binh area, a Ha Long Bay on land, where you can coast in a small boat through rural scenery, including caves. Each boat can hold four passengers and, by chance, I was paired with two young women from Hanoi attired in colorful, traditional attire. They must have taken a thousand phone selfies each during the 2½ hour ride. I offered to take a couple of photos of them together with their phones, in their traditional attire, in that fairytale landscape.

Another stop was the ancient town of Hoi An, a well-preserved trading port dating to the 15th century that is lit with silk lanterns at night. Each evening, boats of all shapes and sizes cruise the river through town, bedecked with lanterns and holiday lights. It’s quite a sight when the moon is full.

I learned only late in her life that my mother had a true love in Vietnam (not my father) but ended the affair to stay in her marriage and with her children. This was during the Vietnam War, and the man was an American journalist for The New York Times and Time, among other publications. He died in a plane crash there in 1965, at age 31.

When my mother died a few years ago, I took some of her ashes to his grave in upstate New York. My mother held him in her memory for another 57 years. I also brought some of her ashes on this journey to Vietnam to lay at the scene, as it were, of some of the happier moments of her life.