{"id":5457,"date":"2024-11-26T13:33:57","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T13:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=5457"},"modified":"2024-11-26T13:37:11","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T13:37:11","slug":"walking-in-cat-ba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=5457","title":{"rendered":"Walking In Cat Ba"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was wondering when I’d see the first one of these signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The toilets are fitted with the delightfully named “bum guns”, but … I’m going to let you Google that for  yourself. And I think you should. It’s educational.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The presence of one of these things in the bathroom tells a story about respecting the sign, I feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I slept in a bit, because I could, and because it was a long day yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My morning walk around the block turned into breakfast, the choice of location in no way <\/em>influenced by the sign on the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My way of exploring a place is to just wander around, and in the interests of not getting hopelessly lost, following a left hand rule as you start isn’t the worst approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After breakfast, I took a wander to the end of the ‘promenade’ & back. There’s so much construction going on all around; If Hanoi smelled of Vehicle Exhaust & Bun Cha, Cat Ba smells of Fish & Cement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone at the hostel last night said that the place probably won’t be recognisable in a few years, and I think he’s right. From the look of it they’re reclaiming a chunk of harbour, so that promenade will be just another street.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After a bit of time back at the hostel I walked in the other direction, and found myself on a loop path around the coast, which was a very pleasant way to spend the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back at the hostel I had two things to do; book a bus out of Cambodia, and apply for a visa to enter Cambodia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First one was easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second one was going OK until the form refused to accept any Cambodian address I gave it for my location in the country. Refreshing the page & trying again just led to a timeout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a<\/em> long <\/strong><\/em>moment of “Oh No, Not Again”, but I dragged it back from thoughts of giving up <\/em>fairly<\/strong><\/em> quickly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Playing a hunch, I switched off the VPN, and that sorted it. Still not the greatest form to use, but I’ve given them all the information I can give. Now I just wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a moment of “let’s see, shall we?” I had a pizza for dinner from one of the promenade places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was … OK. Base was very good, but I’ve come to expect that of bread & bread adjacent products here, but the toppings, aside from cheese & sauce, were hot dog & corn. Not bad, but not exactly a culinary masterpiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, I got to sit at a table by a non-packed road, enjoy an average meal with a beer, and soak up how this was so much more quiet than Hanoi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And for comedy value, two British guys at the next table were sorting out their Fantasy Football trades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was wondering when I’d see the first one of these signs. The toilets are fitted with the delightfully named “bum guns”, but … I’m going to let you Google that for  yourself. And I think you should. It’s educational. The presence of one of these things in the bathroom tells a story about respecting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94],"tags":[128],"class_list":["post-5457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sabbatical","tag-cat-ba"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O6N9-1q1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5457"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5459,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457\/revisions\/5459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}