Rain is rubbish

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Woke up to the sound of thunder and rain at about 5am. We had to get up earlyish as brekkie was at 8. Weather was horrendous, torrential rain. English girls were only on a one day tour so they stayed on the big boat while we got on the little boat to Cat Ba Island. Here we were joined by another tour group (14 people all in their 20's, all from UK except 2 Canadians). Other group had already chosen to cycle on Cat Ba so our group, together with our non English speaking local guide went trekking in the most horrendous weather. We'd all bought plastic ponchos (read: really thin, pretty useless carrier bags) and me and Rob had rain macs on too, we looked well stylish as we trudged through the jungley mountain.

It was quite steep in parts, lots of rocks, puddles, slippy mud and slightly sinister slippy metal ladders! When we got to the top the view over the island was quite good even though it was a cloudy day.Clamber/sliding back down the mountain was amusing as we were all soaked through, my shoes literally had pools of water in them and the waterproofs had seemingly not protected us at all. One pretty amazing thing was all the bright red crabs running around the mountain, never seen anything like it!

We all got back on the bus looking very wet and cold then onto a little boat which was so rickety. They'd overloaded it and it was leaning right over to one side (our guide kept saying keep seated the captain is scared- he was scared so the bloody hell were we!!). They moved some passengers off but it made little difference. By luck we made it to Monkey Island 😊 there was no place to dock as such so we had to walk down a thin wooden plank stretched from the boat onto the beach. We checked into our bungalow. Unfortunately by this point our bags (little and small) were totally drenched 😞 I spread my clothes across the bed in an attempt to get them dry. The bungalow was a bit poo there were big gaps in it for the bugs to get in, a crapola mozzy net and the bathroom was like showering outside on a very hard rocky floor. A hot shower was well appreciated though as was my big hoodie.

The afternoon was supposed to be a day of beach activities after lunch but the weather kinda put an end to this plan. Our tour guide was a bit stroppy by this point and basically left us to our own devices. Many of the group went to their bungalows but we hung around the bar and got talking to 3 lads from London. Spent the afternoon/evening with them playing pool, darts and chatting. Seem really lovely lads and we had a good night 😊 Apparently I have to mention at this point that Rob and one of the London lads Paul were pool champs. Rob's getting quite good at pool and he finished one game with 'an amazing chip shot'.

The weather did improve throughout the afternoon so we were able to have a BBQ tea which everyone was mucho happy about. Unfortunately back in the room my clothes weren't dry in fact they seemed worse. This was due to the aforementioned fact that the bungalow was a bit rubbish and was damp itself. There were centipedes and flying bugs on our bed which Rob had to cull before we climbed under our cold, damp sheet and attempted to cover ourselves in some manner with the mozzy net.

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