Vietnam – day 2
Friday, 13.12.2024
Cat Ba – Ha Long bay
We get up after 7am and head into town at 7:45am for breakfast. We pick a lady right by the road making baguettes. I have one, Jozef has two with egg, pâté and coriander. Meanwhile I remember I left my memory card at the accommodation, so Jozef goes back for it. When it’s time to pay, the lady thinks it over for a while and finally tells us 70000, we really can’t figure out how she got to that number for 3 baguettes. We reach the harbor a bit after 8am. We’ve still got time, so we go for a coffee next door and have one more chicken baguette packed for the road. We wait about 15 minutes for our group, there are only 18 of us total. Then we go through a turnstile onto the pier and wait for our boat. About 5 are docked here, and quite a few people are streaming in, given it’s cloudy and off-season.
Jozef marvels again at how much it’s changed here since he was last here, 8 years ago. Our boat arrives within 15 minutes. I love the interior, it looks so luxurious. First we get some instructions from our guide, and then we all head up to the deck. Our guide, Salu, tells us about the island, the people, Vietnam. First we pass through fishing villages.
People live there normally year-round and go out on boats daily to catch fish. Vietnam welcomes tourists a lot, since it’s an important part of the economy, and without them, they’d have no one to sell fish to. We head toward Ha Long Bay, a popular tourist destination. It’s mostly accessed from the town of Ha Long, from where huge tourist ships also run multi-day cruises, which is a whole different price bracket. The whole area’s listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s made up of limestone rocks and small islets rising above the water.
It’s a huge area, and it doesn’t even seem like this many boats could be moving through it. After about two hours we stop so we can go for a swim. The temperature’s about 17°C. We’re among the first to work up the nerve, and others follow after us. The water’s fairly pleasant compared to the surrounding air. We swim for about 10 minutes, some people jump off the top of the boat. A boat docks next to us and starts blasting loud party music. We’re a more conservative crowd, so we’d rather leave.
Next up is kayaking. We each get a vest and dock at a floating harbor with a pile of kayaks. We pair up and set off as a group. We take the route everyone here takes, through three caves. It’s beautiful here though. The first cave is just a short passage, the second has some really nice formations, and the third was fairly shallow, so every other kayak got stuck and traffic jams formed there. Behind it was just a turquoise bay, and then we headed back.
It takes about an hour and a half, and then lunch awaits. We anchor at a lovely spot and settle in at three tables. Lunch is a real treat. Spring rolls, chicken, tofu, fish, squid, salad, and rice are all brought to the table, and everyone dishes into a small bowl what they want. Melon for dessert. At our table we eat almost everything. Two Israelis sit with us, and we chat about traveling. They tell Jozef he looks like the actor Christian Bale. They ask if we’re related or what, so they’re a bit surprised when I say we’re married. After lunch the French group goes to play some game, the Israelis go for cards, and we go up on deck to the loungers, where we chat with an American. We’re getting pretty sleepy, so we take a short nap.
If I had a blanket, I could sleep for two hours, but my butt was cold. Meanwhile we sail up to Monkey Island. We anchor a bit away and can go swim to the island, but nobody has the energy for the cold water anymore. From a distance we see some monkeys running around the beach. We stay there about half an hour and wrap up the cruise earlier than planned. We’re at the harbor by 4pm, and from there we go for a ride around the area. We find some genuinely nice beaches and trails with views.
We go drop our things at the hotel and I convince Jozef to go for a run. I plan a 5.5 km route, it’s already dark, so we bring a headlamp too. We meet a lot of exercising/running Vietnamese people. The run was great, we shower and are pretty hungry, so we go eat. We’d spotted some restaurants while running, so we head that way. We settle at one that pours beer, where the lady lets us choose between sitting normally inside or outside on small plastic stools. Of course we pick outside.
We have fried rice with seafood. It’s a lot for me, so Jozef finishes off mine. Then we stop at the market to buy pomelo, since we’ve seen tons of them everywhere. We head to the hotel. I edit videos and eat pomelo, which Jozef laboriously peeled. He goes to sleep and I stay up until midnight.
