Day 198 – Cat Ba Island, Vietnam

August 23rd, 2019

Today we had an amazing day exploring Cat Ba Island from dawn till dusk!  And when I say dawn, I mean like 10am. It felt like we had been going since dawn by the end of the day for sure.  Our hotel came with breakfast and we had a nice coffee and Vietnamese pancakes which I think must have quite a bit more egg in it than traditional American pancakes.  We chose the strawberry pancake and it was super good.  After that we rented a motorbike for the day for $3.50 (I think this has been the cheapest motorbike rental yet!). 

We set out exploring and went to Cat Ba National park.  There is a 1.5-kilometer hike you can do to this viewpoint, and not for the first time we set out without enough water.  We had one small bottle between the two of us because we thought 1.5 kilometers was nothing, and we would be back in a jiffy.  Once we started though we realized it was 1.5 km of straight stairs.  It was pretty hot but luckily not too terrible. 

Once we got to the top, it was completely worth it as the views were just gorgeous.  Endless green mountains. 

After the first viewpoint we hiked just a little further to the second viewpoint which was even more of a scramble than the stairs we had just come up.  We made it and took it all in for a while before we were ready to go back down to get more water. 

The stairs down went pretty quick as we were motivated by thirst.  We were dreaming of a blue Gatorade at the bottom.  They didn’t have Gatorade, but we got down and got a huge bottle of cold water which was perfect.  The whole hike was just about two hours.

After lunch we went to Trang Trang cave and ducked around in there. 

The views just driving around the island were amazing.  We then went to Hospital Cave where the Vietnamese created a whole hospital inside this cave system during the war.  It was a bit grim but impressive that they could have the facility inside a cave. 

We continued exploring and went to a couple Cat Ba beaches just to look and see the scenery. 

We were close to town when we got caught in a tremendous downpour, so we went back to our hotel to wait out the storm.  After about an hour it passed, and we went back out for sunset.  I had read about the best place to see a sunset in Halong Bay and we took the motorbike there.  For some reason when we got there the gate was closed and the guard said we could not go in.  I tried to ask why or when it would be open, but I could not get any information as there was a big language barrier.  A bit disappointed, we drove around looking for another sunset spot.  We did not get any spectacular sunset but the scenery around the island was just so beautiful it didn’t matter much. 

We went to dinner at a vegetarian place called Buddha Belly that I had read about. Brendan wasn’t super enthused about an all veggie restaurant, but it turned out to be excellent and we both loved it.  We booked a Halong Bay day cruise for tomorrow and are crossing our fingers for good weather.