Day 34 Sunday June 7, 2009

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Day 34 Sunday June 7, 2009

Switched boats early in the morning to go to Cat BA Island. We met some people from South Africa and Australia. They were fun to talk to. We were dropped off on the harbour and of course it was about 18km from the harbour so we waited for 30 minutes in the sweltering heat on a bench with a littlle stitch of shade above us. Teh bus trip was only 10,000 VND (57 cents) to Cat Ba town and we stayed at the luxurious Bay View Inn with two super fans above the bed, and air conditioner that worked whenever they remember to turn the breaker switch on, pirated cable TV, and electricity that sporadically shut off during the night=) It was fairly clean and cost $15/night so no complaints...We rented a motorbike and headed on down to the Cat Ba National Park. The guidebook was right on the money when they described this place as being like the Jurassic Park. We hiked up several stone steps and 2 local guys were sitting at the top and start walking with us and trying to talk to us when we went by. I made the mistake of talking to him in English and he wouldn't leave me alone. He even got past Camden so he could walk beside me and chat. Camden was speaking to me in Spanish while we tried to get rid of them. Here I am at the top of these steps breathing so hard I can barely talk and this guy wants to have a conversation with me! We kept letting them go ahead and they kept stopping and waiting for us so at the fork in the trail we acted like we were debating in Spanish over which was to go and waved them on. They tried to get us to take their trail saying the other one was the wrong way. Once they were out of sight we took the opposite trail. It was very steep, very rocky and not well marked but we made it to the top and lost those two guys. At the top we met some fun Chinese tourists and climbed to the top of the tower and then back down. We took pics with them and then took the easy route back down the mountain. The views were spectacular up there! For dinner we went to the Hoang Y restaurant, it was a little dingy but the food was good.

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