Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Thanks Andre, so much of the same grace and elegance can be seen in the daily scenes throughout the country.

I love the vessels They are so gracious and they fit perfectly with the landscape which is beautiful also

I'm glad that you liked the pics Paul. The floating villages there are the only ones quite like it that I recall seeing in Vietnam. Down on the Mekong it is quite usual to see extensions to homes built far out over the water that they pretty much classify as floating! There are a lot of house-boats on the Mekong too but the villages in Ha Long bay are much more substantial in that they are made up of floating platforms upon which several houses can be built together.

In Cambodia a similar way of living can be seen at Tonle Sap lake, the largest inland lake in south east Asia, the level of which rises and falls very significantly between the monsoon and the dry season. Here most of the houses are built on very tall stilts (4-6 metres high I would estimate) and take on the look of floating villages during the monsoons.

Thanks for these pictures, and for opening a new vista. I've usually thought of floating villages as connected to cities such as Bangkok...but the idea that they could exist on their own is fascinating. Is this area unique in that way, or are there others in Vietnam?