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HALONG BAY, VIETNAM—It’s certainly overrun with tourists. And it doesn’t matter a lick.
Every day, hundreds of boats, some designed to look like Chinese sampans with flashing, yellow dragons painted on the bow, churn through the waters of Halong Bay, steaming immediately for the towering, fantastic limestone formations that rise suddenly and steeply out of the unhappy-green waters along the north coast of Vietnam.
An hour or so later, journey boats packed with Chinese and German and American tourists vicinity a corner and roll into a floating fishing village that will spark a record million of camera clicks in the blink of an eye. A half dozen or more folks — mostly prepubescent women in traditional, conical hats — will row furiously to the nearest sailboat and offer up juicy pineapples or spiky rambutans or maybe a indifferent drink to the rushing visitors. The village is made up of more than a dozen floating rafts that are topped with beyond repair homes, fruit stands, banks and a floating schoolhouse surrounded right down to the ground by water.
Source: Toronto Star