Pickup from the hostel turned out to be a young suit-wearing woman on a scooter, so an only slightly terrifying ride to the tour office occurred. All but the last 100m was in Old Quarter alleyways, so after walking them for a few days, it wasn’t so bad. It did back up my theory that I’d probably not enjoy a Cyclo ride in Hanoi, so I’m pleased about that.
Then I was told not to get on THIS bus, because there’s another one coming.
Then the same suit-wearing young woman shows up again, annoyed, because apparently it WAS that bus, so there was a trip through even more terrifying Hanoi traffic to catch up to it. 1½ lane alleyways are one thing; Streets with five lanes in each direction are quite another, even though the speeds involved were running pace at best.
I now know the answer to the question of why tourists get injured in these situations; Because there’s no choice but to be in that situation, and aside from saying “forget the whole thing” and walking away, there’s nothing you can do about it. I just kept a firm grip on the handles & kept my weight forward, and trusted that Annoyed Suited Scooter Lady would want to live just as much as me.
Bonus comedy: The guy who flagged us down for the bus so that I could get on is the same one who told me not to board it.
I wasn’t doing that well when I booked this thing, and I’d forgotten almost everything I was told about the trip, so the guide’s briefing was genuinely useful.
- Bus goes to Cat Ba Island via the city of Haiphong
- There’s a cable car to get to the island
- There’s another bus on the island
- We get to the boat at around 1100
- Boat does a tour of Lan Ha Bay
Then there are activities on the island; cycling/kayaking/swimmingNope, misunderstood that.- The boat stops in the National Park, we ride in little electric buses to a place where there was a bit of Cat Ba history, and then a Fish Massage
- We ride bicycles back on a mostly flat route except for the 10% grade but
- Boat goes to a floating platform for kayaking
- Boat anchors for swimming
- Boat goes back to Cat Ba
The rest of this is going to be ridiculously image heavy, and I may end up cutting it into parts. You’ve been warned.
I’d packed up everything the night before to make the morning easier, & set a 05:30 alarm so that I’d be sure to be ready for my 0700 bus. Naturally I woke up early.
The 0700 bus turned out to actually be 0730, presumably because they wanted to make sure that people are ready, so my “plenty of time” turned out to be “may as well have breakfast & repack the bag so there’s one one thing to carry”.
Suited Scooter Lady got me to the bus & we drove for a while. I’m trying to convince myself that the misty effect on quite nearby objects is just a morning fog, but I think I’m wrong.
Stop off at somewhere with bathrooms, a café, and an enormous souvenir shop. It’s a familiar pattern after my NZ travels.
The system for the cable car tickets is that the guide got us to take a picture of the QR code on our phones, so that we could scan in.
The cable car is massive. As you approach the big pillars it feels like you’re going straight up.
And outside the terminal at the other end there’s this. And a couple of taxi drivers trying to pick up fares.
First look at the Cat Ba landscape.
We got to the boat within about a minute of the expected time, & set off pretty much immediately. The tour included a buffet lunch, and tables were assigned, so I was with a Danish couple & two French guys from the same region who’d never met prior to that tour.
It’s very image heavy from here.
Floating villages.
The landscape is amazing. It doesn’t quite look real sometimes, because it’s just so unlike anything I’ve seen before, outside of movies.
On the island, after travelling by little electric open sided carts, there was the Fish Massage. Which turns out to be you sticking your feet in the water and having a huge number of fish start to nibble at them. Felt like a continuous mild electric shock.
I didn’t stop to take pictures on the bike ride, just tried to enjoy it. For a while we were on roads, but then it turned into single file on tracks between fields, then on a raised embankment between fields which got blocked by a water buffalo for a while. These were single speed bikes, so the two 10% grade sections were a challenge.
It was a fun ride, even on the steeper bits.
