Cat Ba Island

The next day we had booked a bus to go Cat Ba, our last destination before heading to Malaysia. So we got up super early to see Ho Chi Chi Minh Mausoleum. Even though we got there super early there was already a queue an hour long. As we didn't have much time we decided to skip seeing Ho Chi Minh and just wander round the grounds, see the Botanical Garden (actually just a park), have Bun Cha for lunch (yummy meat pattys, noodles and herbs in a fish sauce) before seeing Svenja briefly for one last time! I'm so glad we bumped into her, she's been an absolute gem and shown us how people really live in Hanoi even in all the tourist places. We then headed for our bus to Cat Ba. I think we are getting lucky with our transport. It was really efficient and quick! We arrived in Cat Ba and after a bit of an ordeal finding our homestay we were finally able to sit and chill. We met a lovely couple from Brighton, Fabian and Katie, and after a chat we headed out for dinner. We were in the local area of Cat Ba and when walking down the street in search of food we found an evening English Class. The kids were aged 12 and 13 and their level of English was very varied for only basic words to discussing the Illuminati and conspiracies theories of Donald Trump. Seriously, Will actually had this discussion with a 13 year old kid who genuinely believed in the Illuminati and that Hillary... God knows how they got onto that! I was just talking about our travels and showing them different countries and the Google maps of London! It was about 9:30pm when we realised the time and we still hadn't eaten so we walked back to the homestay as nowhere was open and the owner leant us his scooter to go to town for dinner.Read more