Vietnam Photos: Halong Bay

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8273248.post-1148654994669125482006-05-26T23:31:00.000+09:002006-05-27T00:21:30.013+09:00Vietnam Photos: Halong Bay<A HREF="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/218/1670/640/Halong%20Bay.0.jpg"><IMG SRC="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/218/1670/350/Halong%20Bay.jpg" width="358" height="270" alt="" style="display:block;cursor:hand; text-align:center";></A> I finally got around to sorting through all 28,600 of the photos one of my camera-happy friends uploaded to Snapfish of our trip to Vietnam. Here are a few of Halong Bay, which is a three-hour drive from Hanoi and supposedly a UNESCO World Heritage site. Sadly, the bay is inundated by tour boats (just like the one we stayed on overnight *wince*), nobody seems to be doing much in terms of preservation, and there was a lot of garbage floating in the bay's trademark milky green waters. <A HREF="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/218/1670/640/3%20in%20boat%20II.0.jpg"><IMG SRC="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/218/1670/350/3%20in%20boat%20II.jpg" width="358" height="231" alt="" style="display:block;cursor:hand; text-align:center";></A><center>As idyllic as this picture appears, I'm fairly certain this woman brings her children out to pose in front of the tour boats on a regular basis, since the minute my friend took this shot, the woman was paddling over to ask for money.</center> Polluted as it was, Halong Bay--whose name, by the way, in Vietnamese sounds nothing like any way you might attempt to pronounce it--is however quite a photogenic thing, and thus I am sharing these few shots (all of which were taken by my friend, who I'd give credit to, except that I don't know if she'd really want her name posted and, thus, connected with this blog. Of course I could just ask, but I'm too lazy. This is why for the most part I've refrained from using other peoples' pictures on my blog, even when I see something extremely post-worthy. I just don't feel confident of the whole Fair Use doctrine, though my blog is undoubtedly for my own personal, non-for-profit use. I can still see someone having a major hissy fit, and I do believe in asking permission before using someone's work. But in this case, since it's a friend and all that. This parenthesized aside has gotten completely out of hand, so I'll stop now.). <A HREF="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/218/1670/640/halong%20bay%20junk%20boat.jpg"><IMG SRC="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/218/1670/350/halong%20bay%20junk%20boat.jpg" width="358" height="270" alt="" style="display:block;cursor:hand; text-align:center";></A><center>One of the nice tour boats clogging up the bay.</center> brownbreadicecreamnoreply@blogger.com