Day 74 – Arrival to Cat Ba

‘Twas daybreak when we awoke to the insufferable snoring of our new special guest travel companion Lucy Howard in our 3-bed shared room in Hanoi.

Not really, she doesn’t snore…

We were waiting on the street for a bus pickup to take us to Cat Ba Island, when a man in a scooter turned up saying he would take us to the bus. We had shared a message via WhatsApp which he showed me for veracity, said to load our bags onto his scooter and follow him, then promptly zoomed off with all our luggage. For a split second I thought we’d been scammed by a mastermind WhatsApp hacker, but as we hurried off after him, we found him at the next junction waving us on. I breathed a sigh of relief and on we went.

The bus journey was a magical one off ‘nice’ bus journey – every other one we took in Vietnam was pretty horrid (look forward to our night bus in a future episode). It even gave us the option to take a brand new cable car over to the island rather than take the boring old ferry, which we decided to go for.

They’re clearly ramping up development on Cat Ba Island, with big, ugly resorts paving over once green land. However, if you stay relatively out of the way of it, you can pretend it’s not there and enjoy the amazing natural beauty of the island and, as importantly, it’s surrounding water world. It’s an alternative way to visit Ha Long Bay, or Lan Ha Bay which is nearby but fairly well identical. Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO site and the attraction is incredible karst limestone rock formations jutting out of the ocean in a dramatic and undeniably beautiful fashion.

We arrived at our accommodation to find they’d completely screwed up our booking and that instead of the lovely bungalows we’d booked, we’d once again be sharing a room with snorey mcsnore face Lucy (not really) for a night before they could rectify and put us in our own rooms. To soften the blow, they offered us a free lunch and free beer for the evening, which we (but mostly me) took full advantage of like a greedy 12 year old boy at a Pizza Hut buffet birthday party.

In between the gluttony, we set off on a walk to stretch ourselves out after the bus journey. It was beautiful and we were soon greeted by gorgeous views on a well paved quiet road which wound it’s way up and down through villages.

An hour later we were surprised to find the road simply ended in this large basin by a village, with pretty fields and impressive cliffs. We wandered down to the cliffs to a small cave and took in the natural beauty.

We returned the same way and it was dark by the time we returned a few hours later. We passed a remarkable scene, two volleyball courts, tiered up a hill, with high octane games taking place, and a temple above them with lights covering it like a Christmas tree. It’s just something you don’t often see, especially in the middle of nowhere at night.

In bed, we were lulled to sleep by Lucy’s purring snores.

Day 75 – Lan Ha Bay and Ha Long Bay boat tour

We awoke refreshed and were ready for a taxi pickup to take us on our private boat tour I’d arranged in advance. You’ve got to be careful with boat tours, book the wrong one and suddenly you’re listening to Ed Sheeran on a very loud volume and being handed shots of luminous spirits. Hence the private tour which didn’t break the bank too much.

The boat was ridiculously oversized for our party, so we spread out on the astroturf that lined the top deck and, led by chain-smoking Tam, our trusty but slightly odd guide, set off into Lan Ha Bay.

We were immediately motoring through a fascinating floating fishing village, bustling with activity and wondering things like “how do the dogs go for a walk when they live on a floating platform?” among other less trivial considerations.

And then we were into Lan Ha Bay proper and the limestone formations were doing the job of keeping us very much entertained with their beauty.

Also in the area were kites, which flew around the islands and sometimes near our boats; my camera fairly well never left my hands in my bid to get some shots of them in flight.

Billie spotted a langur in the distance which excited Tam VERY much (though he was pretty easily excitable to be fair). Lucy said she saw it but I didn’t believe her. Despite their instructions, I saw nuttin’ (but fear not, there is a plot twist ahead).

Now apparently in Ha Long Bay itself, though with no discernible difference,  we stopped to kayak around a pretty area which took us through some exciting cave tunnels, the ceilings of which were right above our heads. Tam shouted langur! again and I saw a white blob that could have literally been anything but I’m fairly sure that’s what he suggested was a langur. By the time Billie and Lucy caught up, Tam said it was gone, though I could still see the unmoving white blob. On our return from kayaking, of which I took no pictures due to the danger of watery demise of electronics, a fairly large army of kayaking people appeared in the other direction. I’m pretty sure over 100 kayaks each with two people. It was quite the sight; an armada of lifejacket clad tourists wielding smartphones.

Next we were served a lovely vegetarian platter on the boat and travelled on to a tiny beach under a big limestone tower which was really pretty. We jumped off the boat daringly from the upper deck and swam across to explore the spit of land and have a refreshing swim. About 20 minutes later a few other boats turned up, one broadcasting unwanted Ed Sheeran to the rest of us, and joined in the fun.

We returned to our boat once we’d had our fill and sailed onwards to Monkey Island. A small taxi boat ferried us over to the beach itself and we were greeted by a monkey immediately which, unfortunately, Tam fed a custard cream to – laughing outrageously as he did so. We obviously don’t support feeding wild animals (especially not sugary ultra processed shit) but also don’t want to go around telling tour guides how to act or behave in their own country and locality. We settled by not joining in and walking away with a slightly unimpressed look… Eco warriors!

Tam led us up to a viewpoint. The path had crazy sharp rocks and it was basically rock climbing at a certain point. Lucy was impressive and the first to the very top with Billie coming in 2nd place. I, afraid of heights, stopped short of the final ascent, but the view was still great. Shamed and outdone, I led the way back down and we watched the baby monkeys playing on the beach for a while before heading back to the boat.

Our tour was over barring the ride back to port, but Cat Ba had one more treat in store for us. Billie, wildlife spotter extraordinaire, saw them first… “Langurs!”. Tam took up the call, fairly losing his shit with excitement, and no wonder! There were a whole group of them sitting on the edge of the cliff, no ambiguity to their existence whatsoever.

This is the Golden Headed Langur, according to Wikipedia one of the most endangered primates in the world, and possibly the most in all of Asia. This is in part because they are endemic to the small island of Cat Ba, of course, but nonetheless. We had the boat reverse so we could watch them a while. They ran up and down the hills and we had a great time exclaiming at the size of their humungous tails and their adorable golden pointy heads.

Sadly, there are but 70 of these glorious monkeys left in the world, thanks mostly to poaching. We can only hope that conservation efforts are enough to get the population growing again and somehow combat poachers; there’s more than enough island for these primates to flourish again on Cat Ba if given the chance.

Day 76 – Hiking and spelunking on Cat Ba

Today we planned to take in the inland scenes of Cat Ba Island. We hired two scooters (Billie would have to learn quickly) and set off to the Cat Ba Botanical Gardens.

Not really a botanical garden in the sense you and I know it, this was more of a jungle with a track through it, leading to a viewpoint. There was an 18km  option that Lucy secretly wanted to go on but we knew that 18km in Vietnam heat is not equal to 18km in Blighty and convinced her to take the shorter route.

Good choice! The air was absolutely thick with humidity and before long you might have thought we’d just been swimming again, our clothes all taking on darker colours within the 30 mins it took to climb up. We saw a very exciting snake, which (wait for it) Billie spotted. It was a bronzeback tree snake, we later identified.

The top held a stunning view of conical limestone mountains covered in pristine, green jungle forest. It made you wonder how the bloody hell poachers had got to so many of the langurs, but clearly they do…

Drenched as we were, we made our way back down to the remarkable sounds of many a noisy insect, keeping our eyes peeled for more snakes. At the bottom we rewarded ourselves with a cold coconut, the ultimate refreshing drink, and were relieved to board our scooters again, if only in the hope the rushing air would dry us out.

Sadly, it was only a few minutes till we arrived at a cave which our botanical garden ticket also gained us access to. We pulled over, climbed some steps and entered a very odd place indeed.

It was blessedly cool inside, artfully lit, and pretty much resembled another planet entirely. The organic shapes made by water resembled human muscles or other bits of anatomy, and the way grew wide and narrow, sometimes requiring us to duck down low or squeeze through a gap.

The way lasted longer than any of us expected, surely a hundred meters or even more. We came out near a nice café where we lunched on noodles and smoothies.

The bike back to our accomodation was glorious, and we arrived back to throw ourselves into the icy pool with great satisfaction. The afternoon was needed to recuperate and read, before scooting off again for a lovely dinner in town.

And so ended our time in Cat Ba Island. I think you’ll agree we couldn’t have had a better post-city first stop for Lucy to behold the riches of SE Asia’s beautiful landscapes. The bays are definitely up there with some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen… though you’ll find me saying this a lot in future blogs too: Vietnam is bloody amazing!

See you next time, until then – take it easy like Billie…

Disclaimer: Lucy ACTUALLY does not snore, I am just teasing her.