Cat Ba Island

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7th Aug 2006
Halong Bay

Hi everyone.

So I had my first travel delay because of a landslide. We were heading down from Sapa in a van to catch the train. luckily we left early 2.5 hours for a 1 hour van ride. A bulldoser had tried to clear a path around it but every one was still getting stuck in the mud and needing to get pulled through. We were delayed for 1:45 minuts. I swear our van driver use to drive a Indy cars. We did a half hour van ride, down a very curvey mountian road at night in 13 min. the train left the station less then 30 seconds after we got on.
From Sapa I took a overnight train back to Hanoi, we got in at 5:15am. By 6:00 I was at a different train station and on a train to Hai Phong. There I got on a Hydrofoil going to Cat Ba Island. Hydrofoil this is a great inventions. Its a rocketship that skims across the water.
Cat Ba Island is part of Halong Bay, on the east coast of Vietnam. the Island is has a very nice fishing harbour and great beaches. When I arived on the Island I was informed that a category 3 typhoon might be hiting the island in the next couple days. It did end up coming, the 3rd night I was there. But at that point it was just a big storm (alot of rain, thunder, and Lighting). In the morning I wote to water covering my floor, it blow in under the door. I thought it might happen so had all of my things on a table. Streets were covered with water and mud coming down fron the mountains.
while I was at Cat Ba I spent a day out on the beach and another day sailing around Halong Bay. Halong Bay is amazing, I can't even describe it (you have too look at the photos and they don't do it justice). We spent 8 hours sailing around the islands, checked out acouple caves, went swimming a couple times, I got a very nice sun burn.
I'm back in Hanoi for a couple nights, and tomorrow I leave on a night train south to Hue.
One thing I don't think I have mentioned yet is about the scooters. They carry everything on it, you can not imagine how much stuff they can put on a scooter. I very often see 4 sometimes 5 people on one (who needs the family minivan). Not to mention the stuff they can carry on it. My record so far is 5 people, 2 cats and a 3 live chicken (sorry I was not quick enough to get a photo of that).I also saw one with 13 cases of beer! (Bottles)

I hope everyone is having as great of summer as I'm having.

Cheers

Tim

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Photos

Hydrofoil
What a smooth ride