April 8 - 10
We were told our bus would arrive in Ha Long at 5am and that the first boat to Cat Ba would be at 7am, giving us time to watch the sunrise and have breakfast and arriving in Cat Ba late morning. But of course, this was a lie. We arrived in to Ha Long at 2am and got a cheap hotel room for the remainder of the night. Later that day, we took the 'scenic boat' to Cat Ba. It took us through the islands of Ha Long Bay.
Beautiful, even if it was incredibly overcast.
We didn't end up arriving to our hostel until around 6pm, at which point we roamed around the tiny (very touristy) town, had dinner and called it a night.
We spent the next day cruising around the island on a motor bike. It was a beautiful drive, winding through the limestone mountains.
Our first stop was the Hospital Cave, a partly natural, mostly man-made three-storey cave with multiple rooms used as a hospital and military base during the war. From the entrance we got a decent little view.
We hopped back on the bike and found ourselves at the national park. A one-hour up hill hike led us to two view points.
The first had a little platform to look out from.
The second was just slightly higher and gave panoramic views of the island, covered in mountains.
Our last stop for the day was at Trang Trung cave, just down the road from the national park. This was a natural cave that wound like a little maze through the mountain, occasionally opening up, but mostly full of narrow paths.
We cruised back to town along the coast...how romantic!
With a good forecast for our last day, we had planned to climb up to another viewpoint (overlooking the bay) and then lie on the beach. But we awoke to discover it was super foggy. We changed our bus so that we could leave a little earlier and I filled the morning with a walk to a couple of the beaches - would have been stunning if it wasn't so foggy.
No comments:
Post a Comment