Day 68

Hanoi > Cat Ba

The day started fairly uneventful, I checked out and grabbed some Banh Mi for breakfast and grabbed a smoothie as I waited around for my bus to Cat Ba. I grabbed my bag from my hostel then headed over to the office to get picked up. As I get given my little goodie bag for the trip I see Alfie and Daisy walk in. Turns out we both booked the same bus to Cat Ba without eachother knowing. The journey wasn't too long, we arrived to a boat terminal, got a short boat to the island then hopped on another bus to our accommodations. I booked a hostel slightly out of the town so I was dropped off first. After checking in, I rented a scooter as I wanted to make the most of the daylight that I had left.

There's 1 main road across the island so I continued on that road in the opposite direction to which I came as it seemed to pass through the mountains and end up on the coast. It was an absolutely lovely drive and I ended up arriving at a lake which honestly took my breath away. I parked my bike up and admired my peaceful surroundings for a while, before calling my dad to show him the view. After that I continued to the end of the road and sat on the pier to watch the sunset over the islands, this time calling my mum to show her this view.

It was starting to get dark so I started going back but the sun had set quicker than I thought so I ended up driving back in complete darkness as there were no street lights for 95% of the drive. Plus, there were loads of bugs in the air so I had to half wear my sunglasses to stop myself from being blinded by the lens and blinded by bugs - a very uncomfortable drive to be honest, I was glad to be back.

The restaurant close by to my hostel was having a live music event so I wandered over and sat with a couple of guys as there weren't any free tables. These guys turned out to be really nice and invited me to play cards with them. One was from Spain and one was from Netherlands but they both worked in the same city together so were on vacation together. I ordered some noodles and a beer, and we all sat chatting and listening to the music. The music was definitely questionable with varying levels of skill but the last guy to perform, a Geordie, was really talented on the guitar and decent at signing too. We ended the night with a few games of pool before I called it a night.Read more