|Lu’u Toàn || the captain|

Once fire-spying dragons were sent by gods to protect the country of invaders. Thousand of little islands arose from the jewels and jades the dragons spat out in front of the coastline to create effective boarders. As a result of the powerful protection, the residents of this area could live in peace, subsist and grow.

This is the legend of the World Heritage and well-known Ha Long Bay in the Northeast of Vietnam. Ha Long Bay means the bay of the descending dragon. If you enter this area by boat you feel the magic of this place – the emerald colored water, widespread limestone mountains topped with rain forests as well as beautiful white sand beaches.

This is the place where Toán – captain and tour guide – works almost every day on his little colorfully painted boat. Toán is 42 years old and grew up on Cát Bà Island close to the famous Ha Long Bay.

Toán is one out of four sons who grew up in Cát Bà and lived with their family – six in total – on a little boat. His parents were fishermen and lived in the floating village Van Chai next to Cát Bà until they bought a house in town 15 years ago. He went to school for 6 years in total and joined some English classes as well. In 2000 he married his wife Mai and one year later his son was born. Unfortunately for the new little family, Toán had to go to Malaysia to earn money for his family as a packer in a timber manufactory. During this time he really hurt his family because he couldn’t personally help and support them. It was a hard time for the young family – the newborn was at home with his grandmother, the mother worked in Ha Long City during day and Toán in Malaysia. Toán missed them a lot every single day until he finally went back home three years later in 2005. He joined an English class in town to improve his skills and finally found work as a motorbike taxi driver for about two years. After that he begun a carrier as chef on a tourist boat in 2007 and changed two years later to another touristic company to work on a boat as a tour guide and chef. In 2010 his second child – a daughter – first saw the light of day. To not make the same mistake as before he cut down on his work and only took one-day tours instead of multi-day trips to support his wife with the newborn after his shifts. He is very proud of his two children and happy about his whole family. Toán lives next to the house of his mother, who usually stays at home to take care of the house, chickens and the dog while her husband is still working with 65 years as a hairdresser in the supermarket in town. In 2015 Toán saved enough money to buy his own small boat and works as a local guide since then, who offers two days/one night tours for tourists.

A group up to four people can book a tour on his private roofed boat for usually two days and one night visiting various places in the area east of Cát Bà by boat and kayak. On the first day he brings tourists to the Monkey Island, as it’s name implies, where you can see a couple of monkeys running around at the beach. Toán mentioned that the quantity of monkeys are getting less and less due to the fact that they can swim and leave the island – only about ten monkeys are left at the moment. He said that people have to be very careful getting close to the monkeys because he got bitten once – and unfortunately it happens more often because people don’t show any respect to the wild living animals. Toán drove to the beach with his boat to catch up with his customers who were going by kayak to the island and as soon as he arrived the monkeys could smell the food, which was in a bag at the back of the boat. And due to the fact that these monkeys aren’t shy coming close to people, they tried to steel the whole bag of food. Toán tried to secure the bag and within this second the monkey bit him. However, instead of going to a doctor he only used petrol to clean his wound and after a while it already got better. He mentioned, that monkeys are really smart wherefore tourists have to take care of their stuff. If you go to close with your phone they would just grab it and run away – it happened once when he was on the island too. Another time a girl went to the showers after swimming in the sea and hung her bikini over the door. Right after a monkey came, stole her bikini and run away. The poor girl had to go out only with her towel to get her bikini back and it took her a while until the monkey left it behind.

After visiting the island his clients can go kayaking and have a swim or chill out on a small private beach. During these times he is relaxing on his boat, waiting to go on and bring the tourists to the overnight stay on a floating house with a fish farm. Sometimes Toán stays overnight as well and plays cards and gambles with his friends – sometimes they sit on the floor with crossed legs up to six hours. However, mostly he goes back home to his family to be there for his wife and children and comes back early next morning to pick up his customers for another fun and adventurous day. Before that he buys food for the second day and usually has to leave his house about 6am. He really enjoys his job because he get to know so many different people, can improve his English, show and teach them about the area, cook delicious meals, and drive his little boat around the beautiful scenery.

During the tour Toán is always slowly passing a floating village, which is located next to Cát Bà along the limestone mountains to show the live of this community. About 250 families are still living there on floating houses and boats and working mostly in the fishing industry. Toán lived here with his family when he was a child.

Toán invested a lot of money in his little boat – 50 Million Vietnamese Dong (about 1.850 €) – and an additional fee for a license to be allowed to drive tourists around, which is heaps of money for him and his family. If he will be able to safe more money he would like to buy a bigger boat one day.

Toán is a very charismatic, humorous, kind and very motivated man who is willing to learn and improve his English skills due to his job. He loves his job and is very passionate about showing the beautiful area, floating villages, locals and his home city to other tourists. Furthermore he is really happy with his family living together in Cát Bà as he mentioned:

“No more woman, no more family – just my wife, son and my daughter. I’m very lucky and thank my wife.”