Word: bay
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DIED. PAULINE KAEL, 82, passionate, pugnacious, widely influential film critic; in Great Barrington, Mass. Kael began writing about movies in the San Francisco Bay Area before serving as the New Yorker's film critic from 1968 until her retirement in 1991 (with a one-year break for a fling at Hollywood producing). In her colloquial, compulsively readable prose, she punctured the pretensions of arty classics from Hiroshima, Mon Amour to 2001: A Space Odyssey; championed such American filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma and Robert Altman; hailed Last Tango in Paris as a cultural event to rival Stravinsky...
Sunset over Ha Long Bay off the northeast coast of Vietnam creates a scene that defines the Orient. The silhouetted islands, great limestone columns soaring out over the sea from the slenderest of bases, assume such perfection of proportion and form as to mock all man-made sculpture as artless imitation. Centuries ago, the harmony of this seascape inspired a whole school of Vietnamese painting. To drift today in a red-sailed junk beneath the yawning overhangs and watch the fading light transform rock peaks and fringing jungle into giant figurines is, for a few short moments, to become part...
...with offers of rice wine or bamboo bongs also sell coral and shells stolen from the few reefs that remain. And the grenades and dynamite sticks that you see stored in the cabins below give a blunt indication of the level of respect the fishermen pay to Ha Long Bay's 1994 designation by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site...
...Long Bay (the name means "where the dragon descends into the sea") is vast, and once on the waves, it's possible to leave the pollution behind. For a few dollars you can hire a boat with crew from Cat Ba Island (see Hot Spot ) for a day's cruise around some of the 1,969 islands, with lunch on board and the chance to swim in one of the less greasy stretches. Or better still, escape the day-trip detritus altogether and arrange a few days on a luxury live-aboard junk complete with kayaks on which to paddle...
Kayaking back to our boat, we sailed until sunset, dropped anchor in a secluded cove and stretched out on deck to watch meteors flash across the night sky. Out in the bay, lights from squid fishers bobbed on the horizon like fallen stars. Behind us, moonlit rock giants towered over the still waters and silver beaches in their timeless repose. In the dark silence, Ha Long Bay was holding onto its beauty...