After breakfast we boarded Cat Ba Island – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Ba_Island – the weirdness started here. Half our group was on a 2 day 1 night trip, so they all left, then our group of 6 people who were going to the island were separated into a group of 4 and 2 groups of 1, all heading with different groups to do the same thing.
We first stopped at the national park and hiked the most sweaty hike of our lives to the top of a 250m hill. At the top there was a 30 meter tower which was kind of scary to climb… OK, a lot scary to climb. The view wasn’t really any better and once you were up, after a picture of proof, you just wanted back down… but after the trek up the hill you want to do it just because it is up there. We then got dropped of at the hotel where we would spend the night. We were on the 6th floor, which was actually the 7th floor and our room looked over the water. It was really nice.
The fourth guy of our group was a guy named Ishai from Israel. We found another guy named David who is from Australia and was from our boat who had a full hotel to himself, and we all headed off to rent scooters to check out the island. It cost 3 dollars for the bike, 2 dollars for gas, and we were off. The first beach we came across was just amazing. Light brown sand, clear water (which appeared a little brown because of the sand it was picking up) and the waves were huge and just crashing up on shore. We hung around and walked the beach, found a path and another beach in the distance. Figuring it was probably more fun to go back and scooter to the new beach we did just that. Eventually we found a third beach which had some little bungalow huts on it and a restaurant and we had a bite to eat and a drink.
Off again to explore the rest of the island we ended up down a lot of roads that just ended at the ocean. Eventually we found a cave with a restaurant outside it. We asked how much for the cave and they said “no dong no dong” (dong being the currency here) we checked out the cave ant it was really neat. On the way out we were so impressed with finally not being taken advantage of here (it happens a lot in Vietnam) so we all prepared tips for them. Amy was ready to give 100000 dong (5 bucks) and I was willing to pay a little too much for some drink or something. Then the “ticket ticket ticket” chant started coming out of everyone and they wanted 15k from each of us. Screwball tactic that made it so we no longer were so thrilled by their friendliness and as a result, they got only the cost of the ticket from us, no large tips as was planned.
We continued down the road and headed off on what looked more like a sidewalk/lane which took us through some country side. David had a spill at one point, but he was OK. We ended the exploration at a place called “The Hive” which is a little relaxation point for people who climb a mountain near by. There were hammocks around and chickens, dogs, cattle, everywhere. A walk through their fields and we got to go see a few people climbing. There was a really tight cave but my flashlight was not nearly bright enough for me to go too deep into it. We rode back, and short of Amy running out of gas, it was a simple trip.
We had dinner at the hotel, spent some time at the only real hangout which had absolutely horrible drinks (we couldn’t finish them) and then I had one of the best massages of my trip. Unfortunately it was only head and shoulders, not full body, but it was still very much well worth it. It is another city which sort of lives by the curfew in place, so we needed to rattle the gate to be let into the hotel to go to sleep.