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Published: July 23rd 2015
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Day 4 - Cat Ba Island
We woke up this morning at 5am to watch the sunrise.... There was no sunrise due to it being overcast. So... Straight back to bed until 8am. Helen was not quite with it this morning, so I went for breakfast, leaving Helen in bed to get her self sorted! To be honest, she really didn't miss much! A bit of bread, with a bit of an omelette, although the cup of Liptons was worth getting out of bed for.
We left the boat to catch the bus into Cat Ba town. On the way we had a two hour drop off at the National Park, then on to Cat Ba. We played Shut the Box with Jeremy and Annie whilst waiting for the bus.
We arrived at the hotel straight into lunch. It was typical simple Vietnamese food. Very nice, and I was really ready for it. We have made friendships with Jeremy and Annie, the newly weds from London, the couple from South Africa, and Susan and David from Canada. We've had some really nice social time with them.
The hotel is of a reasonable standard; Helen is starting to
get to grips with the way the toilets and showers are, and what standards to expect! I do keep telling her to lower her expectations, which is starting to sink in! LOL. We had a shower and a quick change before heading out to have a look round. Well, it's still just a nice as I remembered. It's actually very European looking, a bit like walking along the front of a harbour in Spain, or even Scarborough... Very seaside like. .... except I am sat looking over a floating restaurants in the sea with huge Vietnamese signage!
We walked quite a long way up the promenade one way on the shop side, then back down again on the harbour side. We stopped off a few times for a drink. The first stop was for iced green tea, then we walked a while and met up with Susan and Dave. We had pancakes with fruit and ice cream, mine was accompanied by a Vietnamese coffee which is a very strong, bitter coffee over ice that is sweetened up with evaporated milk. It tastes much better than it sounds!
We continued to walk until we came across a local food
market that had the most amazing, smelly produce. There was meat, live fish, shell fish, and sort of dried fish 'stuff'! Really interesting! We the did the return walk and met up with Jeremy and Annie. They are lovely company, and really interesting to chat with. It was so nice to see their wedding pictures and learn more about them. We then took a slow walk back up the hill to the hotel. This definitely classed as our cardio exercise for the day!
I spoke with Beth and Ella tonight which makes me feel better. Then also caught up with Tom in Nepal. Enjoying travelling with Helen, but also missing travelling with Tom; it seems odd that he's not here! Another really good day!
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