Day 294: Cat Ba Island

Part of the Typhoon Kristine Philippine stress was that we booked a 3 day 2 night cruise in Lan Ha Bay (the less popular Hą Long Bay) that started on October 28. Luckily, the cruise operator Sunlight Cruises was willing to move our reservation to October 30th.

We learned after the fact that the October 28 cruises were cancelled anyway because Typhoon Kristine moved onto Vietnam 😭 So today we officially started the cruise with food and activities covered for the next few days (yay no planning, only following).

Got picked up from the opera house at 7 am and bused to a ferry terminal in Haiphong. We shuffled off the bus and rode the ferry across the bay; the bus didn’t make it on the ferry so we had to wait for the next one.

Folks will typically book a one night stay, but since we booked two, the guide told us we would stay on Cat Ba Island for night 1. We were the only ones shuffled off the bus which confused the other passengers #bye

We learned that a really terrible typhoon Yagi hit Vietnam a month ago and it was the worst in 70 years. Cat Ba island was hit fairly hard. You could see the trees down on the mountain side and roofs blown off of houses.

In the afternoon we were picked up along with a flight attended from Ecuador who lives in Qatar now for Qatar Airways! We loved learning more about the airline industry from her and how it’s like to be a flight attendant on red eye flights. She said the worst flights are between Qatar and UK/Spain because they have to work 24/7.

The three of us were dropped off in Cat Ba National Park where we were paired with another girl from Canada who is teaching civics in Malaysia! We hiked straight up to a Navy look out for a very nice view of the national park. Afterwards, we trekked inside a cave where there was a mixture of flat stone and limestone fixtures.

Ate dinner at the hotel and took some sleeping pills to prepare for the next day.

Hotel: Sea Pearl

Food:
Not sure

Spots:
Cat Ba National Park
Đỉnh Ngự Lâm
Trung Trang CaveBaca lagi