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| A beach just for us! Almost. |
Eric and I dedicated the last four days of our Vietnam trip to "relaxed tropical time", definitely called for after our extreme hard-core adventuring in Phong Nha and Hue. We debated doing (another) Cruise in Halong Bay but ultimately decided to go to Cat Ba island so we could have more control over our movements. It took us about 18 hours to get there from Phong Nha via a night train (joy of joys), a bus, a ferry and another smaller bus. As we got closer to our destination, the size of our vehicles decreased, but the number of passengers increased until we were almost on top of each other.
As a tourist destination, Cat Ba is still developing. It seems as though it may have been a really fancy place in the 2000s but was deserted for a bit, and is now under massive amounts of construction to catch up with the times. Construction in Vietnam is not a sophisticated practice. The most common way to get bricks up buildings is via a pulley system with a basket attached to a wire that is anchored on the other side of the road. The whole town is covered in a canape of brick baskets and wires, with a carpet of construction paraphernalia (see below), making it feel a bit like the set up for a particularly horrible Final Destination sequel.
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The greatest mystery on Cat Ba island - a permanently closed, profoundly out of place, sparkly night club. What is inside?!?
Cat Ba island, in the same area as Halong Bay, is a great place to visit because it has almost everything Vietnam has to offer within a very small vicinity. Jungles and caves? Yup. Tropical beaches? Yeah! A town that spans a 5 minute walking distance full of restaurant-cum-clubs? Yes! $20 day cruises with lunch and beer? YAASS! For obvious reasons, it was one of my top places.
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Within the national park at the centre of the island...where are the monkeys?
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| Looking out of the main entrance to Hospital Cave - a hidden cave used during Vietnam war as a hospital for local soldiers. |
On our second day on Cat Ba, we boarded a boat at 8am with a bunch of other hung-over backpackers and sailed out into the ocean drinking cans of beer and working on our sunburns. Our first stop was one of the many floating fish farms in the area. Fish farms are the craziest real-life functioning things I have seen. They look like something from the movie Waterworld, or that a kid has built from random bits of lego. Logistically, they are a series of floating boardwalks in a grid pattern that surround nets in the ocean. People, including families, permanently live on these farms in attached floating houses (imagine only stepping onto land once every few months!).
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| Disembarking onto the fish farm...don't fall in! (Seriously, you might get bit.) |
The nets are full of fish varying in size and dangerousness. Some were particularly viscous shark-type things, that I suspect would have tried to eat us had we lost our balance. Our guide told us that the farms were pretty profitable given they could breed the most expensive fish. Apparently the Vietnamese government loans families start up costs to encourage them to get into fish farming. It seems like a great way to prevent over-fishing and help out citizens (though really adds to water pollution).
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| German shepards living the dream. A really weird dream. |
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| Eric and I hung out on the boat with the beer while everyone else went kayaking. Suckers! |
After our cruise we crawled between the three bar-clubs in search of the best party. As luck would have it, there was a huge party that had sprawled out of one of the bars and across the street. A staff member was yelling "Cat Ba Cat Ba Cat Ba!" into a microphone then handing it over to whoever had something they wanted to say. There was free food and free alcohol, including kegs of beer and a giant jar of vodka coke...something wasn't right. We joined the group of confused sort-of-participants standing on the periphery trying to figure out what was going on and what the catch was. After a while, it felt weird and we went left, walking past a herd of mating street dogs that all appeared to have been fathered by the same German Shepard. It turns our there was a super moon that night, which explains the strange behavior.
Between our jungle adventuring and day cruising, we spent as much time as possible beaching, knowing that soon, our tropical dream would be over. There are three beaches within walking distance of the main town area, helpfully named Beach 1, Beach 2 and Beach 3, but unhelpfully not positioned geographically in this order. Each beach has an adjacent resort, which were huge, well-maintained and empty looking, giving them a sort of haunted vibe. Most importantly they sold alcohol and nutella crepes on the shore, creating the optimum beach experience.
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| Our last moments on a tropical beach before heading towards the distinctly un-tropical Toronto winter. |
Cat Ba was awesome and I would highly recommend it as a tropical beach and exploration destination.
Next stop: Tokyo!
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| Bonus Pic! Island goat. |
