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THE ROCKY ISLETS resolved through the haze at the bow, and the captain slowed the boat so we could take it all in. Some of the islands stood densely packed like monks in conclave, others lone and admonitory like the fins of monstrous sea creatures. As I cruised through Vietnam’s Bai Tu Long National Park inventing metaphors, it struck me: This was the first time I’d been relaxed in days.
Just a week earlier, I’d been on another boat, a few miles west in Ha Long Bay, but the atmosphere there had been very different. Don’t…