Advertisement
Published: October 24th 2008
Edit Blog Post
We' re in Cat Ba Island, in Vietnam! As Alex pointed out, yesterday marked the first day in 8months that we didn't wake up in China. It feels good, realllllll good.. Would be even better if Alex and I didn't both have a cough-cold thing. This is sort of a "how we did it" in case anyone else needs information.
Our route: Left Shanghai via 24 hour train to Guilin, then hopped the 1.5 hour bus to Yangshuo. In Yangshuo, we stayed one night only, just long enough to ship a bunch of stuff home.
Then we jumped on board a 6 hour bus directly to Nanning, and stayed 2 nights at LotusLand Hostel, which was one of the best placed we've stayed this whole trip. The hotel only has 7 rooms and the bathrooms are shared, but the rooms are gorgeous and the beds run from wall to wall. Charlie, the friendly owner, can arrange Vietnam visas for the same price as the embassy, so we just sat back, relaxed and played Wi. We also met up with our Chinese friend Roger, known as either "The Wolf" or "The Man" due to his ability to get things done
for you. He's also one of the craziest dancers I've ever encountered. If you can picture a big Chinese dude dancing around an imaginary stripper pole, then you're got a good idea of what Roger dances like.
So, two nights in Nanning, and then we took a bus from very close to the hotel that took us directly to Halong Bay city in Vietnam after the usual border crossing nonsense. Charlie has a lot of good information on this. You can also get a bus that takes you to Hanoi or HaiPhong for around the same price and time (6-7 hours, 160 yuan). If we had to do this again, I probably would have taken the bus that goes directly to Haiphong, because you can get direct boat-bus thingy to Cat Ba Island. As we were in Halong Bay, we had to spend the night and then take a 4 hour mini-tour boat to get here. But the tour dropped us at the other end of the island, 30 km from any hotels or anything! And the motorbike taxis guys kept telling us that there was no public bus, which was an outright lie.
I flagged down a
green bus marked "QH Bus" which apparently runs the length of the island every 30 minutes or every hour for a bargain price of 10,000 dong (around $ .70). Even as I was hopping on board the motorbikes guys were yelling at me "No! This takes you to the wrong place! NO! I give you good price!" Both of these things were lies. From what I've read, Vietnam is full of touts and scammers and people just a little bit on the shady side. Ha Long Bay is certainly full of touts, people grabbing your arm, trying to sell you a tour or a trinket. Whatever you do, don't believe the everything you're told, see for yourself first. I think being in China for 8 months has made us a little more wary than a newbie to Asia. China is great, but people will try to take advantage of Westerners if they can.
We got off in front of Sunset Hotel, directly across from the marina. A man came up to us from the hotel and offered us a 6 dollar hotel room, with a balcony, overlooking the marina. Too good to be true, right? Well, not in this
case! Our hotel room is clean and cute, with light green walls and curtains, HBO and Star Movies, air conditioning, not one but TWO big beds and the cleanest bathroom (with Western toilet too!) in Asia. If you're looking for a sweet bargain in Cat Ba, this is it. Ask for Mr. Tung, who can also set you up with a map of the island.
So that's basically 6 days of travel to get here. Today we plan to relax, walk around, and check out the beaches. Tomorrow, we're going to do some rock climbing, care of the guys at SloPony. Our flight back home leaves Bangkok on November 9th, so we'll be making our way down the coast and then probably flying from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok.
PS I just got hot coffee and tea delivered to my room, for free! Mr. Tung, the hotel owner, likse to throw in coffee and tea as a bonus for staying here. A bonus I will be taking advantage of!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0574s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb