Budget trip to Northern Vietnam

Day 10

After reaching Hanoi early  in the morning,  we walked to Cat Ba express office and waited for it to open to catch our bus to Cat Ba. The bus turned out to be super comfortable and took about 4 hours, including a stop for breakfast and a speed boat ride to the island. The bus dropped us off at our stay at Luna's House hostel.  We reached at about lunch time and had some quick lunchat the hostel rooftop and then checked into our room. The room was neat and tidy.

After a little bit of rest,  we headed out to check out the beaches,  which turned out to be a terrible disappointment.  Of the 3 beaches near the town, two were completely covered in construction material and there was no beach to speak of. The third beach may have been nice, had it not been super crowded.  We tried to just enjoy the views from the cliffside paths and headed back to our room for an early night.  We booked a Lan Ha bay tour at our hostel front desk for the next day.

Day 11

We started the day early after breakfast.  Our tour bus picked us up and the group headed off to the pier, where we got on to our boat for the day. We started off by just going past the floating village near Cat Ba, but without making a stop. The first hour or so just involved us sailing through the incredible scenery of Lan Ha bay and Ha Long bay. The weather was super sunny, which meant we got a clear view of the bay, unlike most of the photos we saw online.  After an hour,  we stopped off at a location, from where we took our kayaks out and rowed around a couple of caves and ended up in a hidden lagoon. Once in the lagoon, we were allowed to take off our life jackets and jump in the water! It was very refreshing in the heat. The water was not very clear, and honestly, I saw a lot of trash in many parts of the bay, which was seriously disappointing.  But it did not really take away from the fun of swimming around. After an hour and a half of kayaking, we got back on the boat to jump 20ft off the side of the boat into the sea. That turned out to be both fun and painful. 

Lunch was great and really welcome after the exhausting kayaking. The tour guides also gave us a free beer each. 

After lunch,  we moved again for an hour, and we came to a stop where we had about two hours at our leisure to swim, kayak, or explore the tiny isolated beaches. I had a great time swimming in the open sea and kayaking around, and we crawled around some seriously cramped caves in the limestone mountains. Unbelievable fun! The water was warm and it felt like heaven, really.

After that, the boat headed back and had some dinner at a nearby hostel that had a social dinner. We met a local there who worked for the Cat Ba langur conservation project and learnt some interesting stuff from him. Thanks Anh!

We had just learnt that day about the critically endangered cat ba langur, with only 70 individuals left in the wild. We think we saw a baby on one of the mountains! 

Day 12

This day we rented a motorbike to drive around cat ba national park. The drive was pleasant. We started with an hour long climb up to the Ngu Lam peak, the highest peak in cat ba. The climb took about an hour through a forested trail and we were drenched in sweat by the time we got to the top. 

The view from the top was incredible with layers of the karst mountains fading away into three background.  Once we headed down, we went to the nearby Trung Trang cave, which was full of stalactites and stalagmites. The interiors of the cave were incredible and we enjoyed exploring the inside of the surprisingly long cave, for about half an hour. 

After that,  we drove around the island and came across another cave as we were driving- dong hoa cuong cave, which turned out to be pretty good, considering it didn't seem very popular. 

We got caught in some rain at this point, but decided to just drive around the scenic roads anyway, until we headed home for dinner and rest, enjoying our last day in cat ba.