The past week we have made our way to the north of Vietnam. Our trip through Vietnam has been nothing short of incredible!
We spent a night in Hanoi to organise getting to Cat Ba Island and to rest after flying up here. We managed to get a deal for the bus and the ferry over to Cat Ba which dropped us off directly at our hotel. We weren’t staying in the nicest of places, in fact I’m pretty sure it was an old converted hospital judging by the layout.
At first, I didn’t get a very good feel in Cat Ba, until we stumbled across a bunch of local guys playing football on the beach and had a kick about.
The following day we hired a scooter, although this time it was a cute baby blue vesta so there was definitely a photo opportunity there. We went to Cat Ba National Park where we hiked up 1000m, taking about an hour to get to the top. The views as you reached the very top were insane. You could see the mountains in a 360 perspective and there were 100’s of them. I’m bloody happy that it looked the way it did as the hike up was hard. Everyone at the top was dripping through sweat and it was only around 10.30am.
We went to the beach in the afternoon and had a picnic with our $1 Bahn Mi’s (a traditional Vietnamese baquette). We couldn’t swim in the water as there were lots of jellyfish but of course T had a dip regardless.
We got the boat over to Halong city from Cat Ba and the views were stunning. We sailed through bright green islands and arrived at the port.
Halong is absolutely dead, like seriously dead. We wandered around trying to find lunch but there were a total of around 3 restaurants that were actually open, and none of them looked appetizing. We decided to go with the Italian restaurant but after T was served packeted pizza from a freezer we left, refusing to pay the full amount. For the rest of the day we sneaked into a hotel to use the pool for an hour before ending up at a pool bar sipping cocktails overlooking the infinity pool. It wasn’t as good as it sounds, it was completely overpriced but we were extremely limited for choice.
Click here to read my next post: Accidentally Booking on to an Old People’s Trip