Day 40 - Cat Ba Island - Best Day Ever!!

Waking up really early after staying out and staying up way too late, we thought we wouldn't end up doing much today. Well we were wrong!

After our hotel breakfast (pancakes for Tim and pho for me), we caught our transportation to Cat Ba Island. The public transportation system in Vietnam might even beat what we experienced in Europe (except that there aren't high speed trains). We haven't even had to walk to a bus station; we're always picked up and dropped off at our hotel. The bus driver picked us up at our hotel in Hanoi, drove the 2.5 hours to Halong Bay, drove the bus right onto the ferry to Cat Ba Island, and then dropped us off at our hotel right on the water. Our 4th story room with floor to ceiling windows has a beautiful view of the sea.

We got here around 1:00, ate lunch (fried rice for me, chicken and vegetables for Tim) and were planning on just relaxing most of the day but the hotel owner insisted that we rent a motorbike and explore the island. So we did - $4 for the whole day! We would never have considered doing this in Hanoi with the crazy traffic, but it is way more calm here - a little traffic in the town but once we got off the main drag, the road was clear. We stopped at the cave hospital museum, where soldiers were treated during the American war. Then we continued on through Cat Ba National Forest, all the way to the other end of the island (there are 2,000+ islands in Halong Bay, Cat Ba is the largest). The views on the ride were beautiful - mountains and giant rock formations, all covered in green. We turned around once we reached the beautiful bay on the other side and returned to Cat Ba Town to watch the sunset on the bay. Then we got a strange but delicious dinner of spring rolls and clams.

Now we are ready to get to bed early - boat trip tomorrow!Read more