The beauty of Halong Bay is well documented by this point in time. The attraction in the northeast corner of Vietnam is advertised heavily to overseas tourists before they even set foot in the country, and many come to Vietnam specifically for the bay itself.

However, the side that visitors don’t see before their arrival is often all-too-apparent after boarding a cruise and heading out into the bay. Sections of the bay are polluted with rubbish and other residue that is slowly killing the environment and seriously threatening the long-term health of this treasured world wonder.

In a bid to quell the tide of rubbish in the bay, V’Spirit Cruises, the father company of the V’Spirit Premier Cruise, teamed up with the Foreign Trade University in Hanoi and the Université de Nantes in France for an art exhibition highlighting the problem. The exhibition was made more powerful by its little artists, schoolchildren from Quang Ninh province, and their heartbreaking images of the future of Halong Bay.

On the beautiful Soi Sim beach, a shore prone to the washing up of such detrimental rubbish, ‘Halong Bay in my Eyes’ was launched on 16th April 2014. Despite their tender ages, some of the child artists had a remarkably clear understanding of the threats facing Halong Bay, and it was particularly distressing to see that even children knew full well the problems lying directly on the doorstep of their home province.

Many of the children featured the rubbish pollution as their main subject, though some featured dying wildlife and other forms of pollution. Upliftingly though, many of the kids decided to paint a more positive picture, of beach clean ups and of people disposing litter properly, all under a banner declaring ‘for a Green Halong’.

There was much intrigue by locals, tourists on a cruise and even members of the media, who brought cameras and photographers to show the children’s messages of the dire need for action to the rest of the country. At the V’Spirit Premier Cruise, we will do everything possible to realise these children’s dreams of seeing a cleaner, healthier Halong Bay in the future.