A Hard Earned View Over the South China Sea

Small glassy waves lap at the sand, but otherwise it is silent. The calm South China Sea stetches out to the south, small islands dotting the horizon. It’s a spectacular setting really, this isolated, crescent-shaped beach, reminiscent of a dramatic scene from some old movie like “From Here to Eternity”. On this day, however, my companion is not a pretty brunette in a 1940’s swimsuit, but my old friend Rocky who hasn’t shaved lately. Oh well.

We’ve taken a few days off from a volunteer medical teaching assignment in Hanoi, Vietnam to explore Halong Bay, near the port city of Haiphong. We took a boat to Imchau Island which features a sleepy little fishing village. Most of this sizable island is unspoiled and uninhabited, we’re told.

We’ve hiked to this beach on a faint trail which led from the village back a few miles.  There’s nobody here. We really didn’t expect to leave the people behind –we’ve found solitude elusive so far on this trip- but such is the way it is.

When we flew in low on our approach to Hanoi’s “Noi Ba” airport ten days previous we were startled to see bomb craters still evident, left by American bombers over  thirty years before. Screeching to a landing in our Singapore Airlines 757 we wondered how we would be received by the people in this still-communist country, in light of our “former enemy” status. Weeks later we will be able to look back at the grace and generosity with which we were met by everyone. To most Vietnamese, the war with America is but a hazy memory. Indeed, two thirds of the population was not even born at the time of the conflict. All the people we meet here greet us with open arms and warm smiles.

The strand is backed by a steep, densely-vegetated hillside which soars 800 feet above us like a small mountain. Rocky and I get the idea at the same time: we need to climb this thing. “Imagine the view from up there,” I muse as we note that the way doesn’t appear to be so steep and vegetated that it can’t be negotiated. Up we go, feet occasionally spinning beneath us as we clamber from root to root. Rocky adds distraction, if not comfort, by mentioning the varied snake population of Southeast Asia. As we climb higher the vegetation thins and the limestone karst protrudes more and more. Nearing the top we abruptly face a concrete foundation, atop of which is a ledge and a large opening tunneled into the rock.

Standing on the ledge now, we notice several other similar alcoves scattered along the top of the bluff; caves excavated into the hill and enclosed by huge rusty steel doors. I catch Rocky’s eye and we think the same thing: gun emplacements. Cool. I peer around the edges of the heavy chained doors, expecting to see an empty cave, and I’m startled to see a cannon, a big gun, staring back at me, its barrel level with my eye sockets. I’m pretty sure that it’s of a vintage a few decades previous, maybe even from the 1960’s, but it appears to be well-maintained, freshly painted, ready to fire. “Same thing here,” Rocky reports from an adjacent bunker. This is kind of spooky, and it’s particularly unsettling when we hear voices coming our way. They are speaking Vietnamese. We shouldn’t be here.

“Let’s get out of here!” says Rocky in a hoarse whisper. But I have already begun my descent, launching myself down the way we came, grabbing at clumps of exotic vegetation to keep from becoming completely airborne.

My imagination takes over. The communists –the Viet Cong- are stalking us now. We’ve been caught in a restricted area. We’ll be imprisoned as spies. My heart beats against my eardrums. Besides excited Vietnamese voices above us, I think I hear bullets ricocheting off of the limestone. Rocky has caught up with me now. He leaps past me, and I glimpse my fear mirrored in his eyes. I wonder if even the big guns are trained on us now.

We tumble to the beach and land in a heap. As we start to breath again we notice how silent it is. As the minutes go by reality returns, and no, we are not being pursued or shot at. We will not be imprisoned at the “Hanoi Hilton” We look at each other and are startled and amused to see how dirty and scratched-up we are. Then we notice a small woman with pointed “rice hat” standing there with a goat tied to a thin piece of hemp. She grins at us, as the quiet gentle people always do, and we start to chuckle. The woman puts her hand to her mouth and laughs too.   Soon Rocky and I are laughing our heads off as we lay back in the soft sand and warm sun, in what is actually a bit of paradise on earth.

I still wonder about those big guns sometimes though.

By John Robinson
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