Cat Ba

9 – 10 July 2011

The local ferry, crosses from one side to the other.
Was funny watching everyone run and cram onto it 

Well I succumbed to paying 200,000 dong for my ferry ticket to Cat Ba as there is absolutely no English help around the dock or anywhere in town including the tourist information centre which said there was only one boat at 9am, they go all day!  Every second person sells ‘tickets’ for foreigners at the standard price of 200,000 dong so I just went with it, not going to break the bank.  Directed to the front of the boat as “the best seat” even though there were fans and cushioned chairs inside but it was nice to be outside.  And as I read on the net from someone else’s experience I should have tried my luck with waiting until getting on the ferry to purchase my ticket.  80,000dong from the guy that walks around!!! So for anyone that reads this and gets the ferry from Hai Phong to Cat Ba GET YOUR TICKET ON THE BOAT.

Cat Ba, as I was informed by a local, was super busy full of Vietnamese tourist as it is their holiday destination and especially on summer weekends!  All the hotels I checked were booked out.  Blow out.  To my luck, although a bit hesitant to start with, a hotel manager said he was fully booked but if I like he had a room on a house boat.  I’m listening.

Does it have a fan, bathroom, clean, where, safe, food and drink?  I was assured it had everything and seeing a single photo of one bed I just decided what do I have to lose?  It should be an experience.  $55 USD including, dinner, breakfast and full day tour of Lan Ha and Ha Long Bays, kayaking, swimming and visit the Sung Sot Cave.

A bit of sunset kayaking

Man what an unbelievable awesome couple of days.  Away from the tourist madness of Cat Ba, out on the water on a floating small group of houses run by the Vietnam Navy, amazing food, amazing sites and even had the company of some locals who arrived later to stay – 3 French working in Vietnam and one local Vietnamese girl.  Yarns, food, laughs, red wine, beer and too much vodka and rice wine.  Hilarious night but bad news for the head in the morning.

The food, the people, the vodka (centre of tables)

The power was switched off at around 5:30am so with no fan keeping me from melting I slowly got up with a good old hangover.  Noodles, eggs and fruit for breakfast (a pretty hangover feed) then I just had to wait (and hope) that the tour I was going on would come and pick me from what seemed like a random place.  40 minutes later than I expected but it came so you can’t complain.  Just a small boat (think organised through Cat Ba Ventures and meant to be good tours that go a bit off the beaten track or water in this case) but a really cool group of people aboard.  Just 5 of us; me, two Americans (Leah and Elizabeth) and an older couple which the wife was super friendly and joined with everything and the husband just sat on the boat and slept most of the trip.  Apparently he has never been in the water and he didn’t take any plunge this trip either, I wondered what the point of it would be coming on this tour??

Just relaxed on the boat yarning away to Leah and Elizabeth, taking in the awesome sights of the endless huge krast outcrops launching out of the water, getting to cool off with some swims (marginally – the water is pretty warm), checked out a couple of attractions (Sung Sot Cave and Monkey Island) and ate some more amazing food!  It was mint.

Team Chilaxed 

Sung Sot Cave was like a Hollywood set.  A MASSIVE cave with a nice easy cobbled walkway through the cave and all lit up with coloured lights made it look quite fake.  Cool but weird.

Sung Sot Cave

The impressive view when you come out

One of the culprit monkeys

Monkey island.  Elizabeth read the blub from her unofficial lonely planet – “beware of the monkeys on the island and being bitten because the rabies shots to follow are not so enjoyable”.  Surely it can’t be that bad… both Leah and Elizabeth got first hand experiences of being chased by monkeys!  None of us actually saw Leah being chased but she had to throw her coke can to distract them from chasing her!  Mental sticks.

View from the top

I was stoked with how it all turned out.  My hotel man kept a bunch of my gear safe and my bike while I was away and sorted me a room for the night I arrived back.  Somehow on a very busy weekend Cat Ba just seemed to work out.  Think I paid a bit extra for my two days as I found out the tour was only $20 USD, so basically I ended up paying $35 USD for one night away but it was an awesome night and to have everything to work out so well it just didn’t really matter.