This morning we left Hanoi. Hanoi is a truly crazy city, and it is one that we have grown to love. The craziness and functional lack of rules it has makes Hanoi one of a kind, and like nothing we have seen before, but it wore us out. It was nice to leave today.
We left for Cat Ba Island, which is the largest island in Halong Bay. Covering about 100 square miles it is fairly large, but with how empty it is and how nice its roads are it is easy to get around. We booked our trip here through our hotel in Hanoi, which cost us about 3 dollars more than planning on our own would have, and was worth the convenience. We were picked up by a taxi at our hotel at about 10:00am, which brought us to a bus that took us to Haiphong, a large industrial town on the coast. After that we took a short bus ride which brought us to a boat, which brought us to the island, followed by another bus to Cat Ba Town on the southern tip of the island. In total, we spent about 5 hours traveling, which was not terrible, but not super eventful. The journey was interesting because of all the transitions we had to make between different modes of transport, so at times we felt like sheep, being herded, not exactly knowing where we were going. But, despite a little confusion and a lot of transitions, the trip went very smoothly and quickly.
We arrived in Cat Ba Town at about 3:00pm, and our first objective was to escape the heat in a hotel room. We didn’t have anywhere booked, but the town’s main street along the water is home to many hotels, so after a few minutes of searching for available rooms we found a suitable place, and settled in.
Because we had a fair bit of time left in the day, we decided we would try and explore the island. We rented scooters from our hotel, and after getting some gas and getting out of the town headed north up through the island. The day started getting really good. The island is nearly empty, and with all of its limestone mountains and jungle foliage it is extremely gorgeous. As we rode the bikes through the island the wind cooled us down, the sun started to get lower, and the roads were perfect. We spent all afternoon driving in a big loop; starting up through the center of the island and later returning to town down a quiet coastal road, which followed the crooked coast giving us some amazing views of the bay.
We returned to the hotel, rested from the heat for a few minutes, and headed to dinner. We ended up at a small place just a few buildings down from our hotel and had some really great pho, steamed rice, and smoothies. After that we wandered around the city, which was very interesting. As opposed to Hanoi the city is catered primarily to tourists, so more people speak english here, some of the food is more westernized, and there seems to be more order. With all the travel and motorbiking we are quite worn out, but excited to get to know the island better.
So far Cat Ba has been great. The people here are very polite, the roads are quiet, the city is clean and it feels more like what we will be encountering in the places we will be visiting later in the trip than Hanoi did. As much as we both loved Hanoi, it’s a good change of pace.
Tomorrow we will be exploring the island more, and trying to plan a day trip of the bay. We didn’t originally plan on going into the bay for more than an afternoon, but it seems like something we can’t afford to miss. From what we have seen Halong bay is even more pretty than we expected, and we will probably be spending a day more than we planned around here.
Tomorrow we will be able to give a longer review of the island, and what we think of this area!
-Ben