Chilling out in Halong bay
Trip Start
Apr 16, 2008
1
17
55
Trip End
Apr 15, 2009
Cat Ba,
Vietnam
Friday, June 20, 2008
We spent our first day on Cat Co beach taking in the sun and taking the hits from the big waves. I mastered body surfing - I hear it is a showcase sport at this years Olympics - and Scott mastered "wearing the face off a wave". You'd better ask him about that. Made friends with a gang of Vietnamese girls who were eager to practice their English...for 3 hours. But it was good fun and we met them a few times over the few days there.
We also had another random meeting with John and Gemma whom we had got chatting to in Hanoi. Hit the local hostel bar and tried a few local brews.
On our 3rd day we did a Halong bay tour. Some parts we pretty amazing and we had great fun but other parts were blatantly over-exploited and gave you the feeling of following a cash-cow procession. In particular the scenery all they way was amazing as you'd expect, we had a good gang our our boat and the food was good. However, for some reason all boats visit the same cave and it is not that impressive, especially when lit up with some disco lights. We also had good craic kayaking around for a while trying to find a hidden lagoon. We succeeded, but getting in under an arch involved some contortionist style limboing in the boat. The day ended with a speedy escape from Monkey Island when the warden wanted us to pay for swimming to close to a private beach.
We had one more day at the beach and another night out with the friends we made there and it was time to move on.
Next stop Hoi An.
