After a noisy and constantly interrupted night of train hell to Hanoi, we arrived in the early morning and made our way to a Bus station a little bit out of the city. From here we booked a bus-ferry-bus ticket that would get us to Cat Ba island, East-ish of the Coast from Hai-Phong.
We wanted to go and see the great Limestone cliffs that many associate with Ha Long Bay. It is one of Vietnams most popular tourist attractions and is yet another UNESCO site. To avoid the multitude of tourist traps and rip-offs associated with a Ha Long Bay visit, we discovered that you can quite easily get to Cat Ba Island and take cruises from there through an area known as Lan Ha Bay, some distance South of Ha Long, but equally as stunning with the same geographical features, minus the 500 tour boats.
We got in touch with an outdoor adventure company called Asia Outdoors, formally known as Slow Pony. They specialise in rock climbing trips but can take you cruising out through the bay, Kayaking, deep water soloing (free climbing a cliff as high as you dare before dropping off into the water below) and the likes.
The food in Cat Ba is terrible and the service isn't much better, but the things you will see once you get out of the harbour or climb the hill up above town are fantastic. Many Vietnamese visit Cat Ba and they were here in full force. During the day they would mostly stay inside (the women seem to have a fascination with being as white as possible) and then as the afternoon wore on they would come out of their hotels in droves, sometimes groups of hundreds of them walking down the street like it was some kind of peaceful demonstration, it was quite a site. Apparently another interesting site was me and my beard. I had numerous people stop and ask to have their photo taken with me, or point and stare without shame. I was a side-show freak and went on for several days while we were here, although it happened elsewhere just nowhere near as much.
Our first night we had dinner and watched an electrical storm off in the distance. The beer here was some of the cheapest we had come across. We were buying Bushies of Tiger at 2 for 25k Dong during happy hour, thats 50c a bottle. Thank you mother for the rabbits!! We explored the harbour area and yet again were simply disgusted at how much rubbish was in the water of what should be such a beautiful place. Seriously, the water at the edge of the main peer, which has several seafood restaurant just meters away, looks like a dump. It is truly sickening. What can be done to get the word out that it isn't cool to just throw all your rubbish in the water? The fish they all love to eat come from there!! It's so frustrating :(
Our bay cruise / Kayaking trip was excellent. We left in the morning and the slow trip out to pick up the Kayaks had us sliding through incredible limestone cliffs jutting out of the water. We stopped and dropped anchor near a completely enclosed lagoon, paddling under the small arch that was the only way in or out, then swimming from our kayaks in the green-blue warm water. We kept exploring the areas many arches and secluded sandy beaches, swimming and discovering cool little coves and rock formations.
We made several friends on the boat and managed to get a crew of people together to take the overnight trip out again into the bay. The pricing is based on how many people go, and starts of fairly expensive, but once 6 or more are onboard, it becomes a great deal! you go out in the afternoon, jump off the boat all evening, have a great seafood dinner prepared for you, drink and play music and then rise to dawn in one of the most beautiful places you will ever go. In the morning before the overnight stay, we walked up cannon hill to see the views over the harbour to the south and the bay to the north. The light was not great for photographs, so sadly the pictures that can be remarkable were not great, but you could see how impressive the area was, and gave a good sense of scale.
The heat and humidity at 8am on this day was in my opinion the worst we had experienced. I say this in spite of it having been somewhere between 35 and 40 celsius for the past 5 weeks or so, we were sweating more profusely than ever. It was insanely humid and we were dripping wet within minutes of leaving our hotel, and the uphill walk hadn't even started. When handling my camera I was constantly wiping sweat from my face and arms because I kept dripping on it.
As the day wore on the weather changed and storm clouds rolled in. Great, we are going out on a boat for the night and the storms are going to throw us around like corks in the ocean!! We still went and although it rained and the thunder and lightning raged, there was very little wind and we were in a pretty secluded little bay with pretty calm water. We jumped of the double story boat and swam until it was almost dark. The lightning show that went on few the next few hours was stellar, constant striking and deep rumbling thunder, it turned out to be a unique experience and I cant wait to process the photographs I got of the sheet lightning rolling through the low clouds.
Dawn was very beautiful and still, but sadly the clouds were still around and yet again I got zero light for sunrise. The peace was briefly interrupted by a local fisherman using dynamite to fill his boat with bounty, that was an interesting sight to see!!
We will not forget our time in this incredible place, another highlight of Vietnam and one of my favourite experiences of our trip. We had Hanoi and Sapa still to come before heading back to Thailand for the final stretch.
No comments:
Post a Comment