Blogs from Cat Ba Island, Red River Delta, Vietnam, Asia

After leaving Sapa we went back to Hanoi for one night and then took a local bus to Cat Ba Island. We decided to go to Cat Ba Island instead of Halong because we have heard good things about it and it's basically Halong minus the tourist crowds. It's really easy to arrange the trip by yourself without booking with an agent. Just go to the Loung Yen bus station and there you can buy a ticket for VND220000 that includes the bus, a minibus to the ferry port, the ferry and a minibus to Cat Ba Island. The journey takes about 4 hours door to door and is really easy. All the accommodation is pretty much on the sea front and they offer good deals. We found a nice one for $10 with lovely sea ... read more

Fourteen hours on a bus and I go from mid-point Vietnam in Danang to the Northern capital of Hanoi. But I will leave this city for another time and skip over instead to Cat Ba, the largest island of Halong Bay. Halong Bay (and Lan Ha Bay which is the same thing just different province) is supposedly one of those "must see wonders" of the world. Legend says the karst mountains, at a distance appearing as one continuous chain but which are in fact separated by quiet coves and smooth expanses of water, were created by the tail of a passing dragon rising and falling as his wings carried him further inland. Most of the islands are uninhabited, there being few places to dock a boat and building a house on sheer rock face an engineering ... read more

Andy says: We have now been on Cat Ba Island for 3 nights after spendng a few days in the mountains in Sapa. It seems that everywhere in Vietnam closes down after about 9pm so it's lucky we've had some nice scenery to look at! It was a long journey to get to Sapa from Hanoi on the overnight train. I'm not sure the rest of our sleeper carriage were impressed at the smell of mine and Dan's feet when we took our shoes off! It was actually a lot more comfortable than we expected if you could handle the UNBEARABLE heat! Got to Sapa 8 hours later and jumped in a minibus who's driver was typically Vietnamese....mental! This journey included a whole new level of danger however in the form of mountain roads and sheer ... read more

The less well trodden paths of a country like Vietnam can be difficult places to negotiate successfully. As far as Ninh Binh we had been pretty fortunate: trains generally came roughly when they were scheduled to; local people generally had a few words of English, or at least understood when we attempted to speak some phrasebook Vietnamese. The final destination before Hanoi and our flight out of Vietnam proved to be a little more of a leap of faith.  We began by planning to take a very early morning bus north east to the coast. We arrived bleary eyed at the station and waited. Numerous bus drivers came into the station, shouted their destination at us and laughed as we replied with vacant, bloodshot expressions and vainly held up our homemade sign for Cai Rong. Still ... read more

We arrived in Cat Ba Island after a 4 hour journey. A bus from Hanoi to Haiphong then a short boat trip from Haiphong to Cat Ba followed by a bus ride into Cat Ba town. Most tourists just book a trip to Halong bay from Hanoi and do not venture out this far, so they do not make it to Lan Ha bay which was recommended to us by many travellers who said it was more beautiful than Halong Bay. We arrived on a Friday and the weekends are a busy time in Cat Ba as the local Vietnamese tourists come swarm the place. We spent the next hour trying to find accommodation which proved to be difficult as most had been snapped up and Hotel owners were asking ridiculous amounts like $30 a night. ... read more

On the 15th we left the boat after breakfast and headed over to Cat Ba island across from our anchorage. This is the biggest island in Hao Long bay, probably about 30 by 50 kilometers. We took another minibus into the center of the island where we stopped for a bicycle excursion. While Carolyn slept on the bus, Jacob, CC and Ted (and the other tourists) took some bicycles for a 5 km ride across the island to see the sights. We stopped near the hospital cave. This was a big natural cave that ended up being expanded into a 3 story underground hospital during the war. The kids weren't interested so we just cycled a bit further down the road before returning to the bus. The cycling was easy and flat, but the bicycles made ... read more