I got to Cat Ba by taking a bus from the Luong Yen bus station in Hanoi. The ticket I bought was actually for the journey to Cat Ba, not just a single bus. The journey consisted of a big bus to Haiphong, a small bus to the ferry terminal, a boat and then another bus. Without knowing it at that point, I would eventually talk to every person on that journey, as we were all going there to do the same thing.
Whilst walking around the sea front in Cat Ba, Sebastian and I found the office for a tour operator which did boat, kayaking and climbing tours of the local area. They seemed expensive, so we declined to sign-up to anything, but met two Australian guys who were interested in doing the same thing. After going for dinner with them, they pointed out the other Italian girls from the journey, who were thinking of hiring a boat to go along the bay. This sounded more like my kind of thing, as I wasn’t there to do kayaking, but would have to if it was the only way to see the bay. One of the girls, Gabri, came over to say to the boys that they would not be joining them for whatever activities they had planned, as they were thinking of hiring a boat. I asked about this and we eventually ended up staying in the same hotel, going in the same boat and generally spending most of the next day together.
The boat trip was amazing. The weather had been grey and cloudy up until this point, but as we were sailing around Lan Ha Bay, the sun came out and the weather was marvellous. I had to borrow sun cream off Nora, who along with Eduardo, had also joined the boat trip. Nora, Eduardo, Sebastian and I all ended up going swimming, despite not actually having any swimming stuff.
On the way back, we also stopped at Monkey Island, which the boat driver said we could do for free, so we obliged. The boat from the big boat to the shore was tiny and threw you about a lot, but it was worth it, as the view from the top of one of the karst peaks was astounding. After spending about an hour on Monkey Island, we got back on the boat and headed for Cat Ba.
Day two was spent climbing the mountain in Cat Ba National Park. Gabri, Claudia and Bernerdetta had decided to move on at this point, so it was just Nora, Eduardo, Sebastian and I. It was still very good and we hired scooters to get to the park. After climbing the mountain, we decided that it was too much effort getting back to the other side and ended up stopping in a small village on the other side of the park. There, a woman was trying to sell us a ferry ride back to Cat Ba, bikes, or both. We decided to walk to the ferry terminal, where we got on a small, local boat back to Cat Ba. Once in Cat Ba, it was obvious that we needed to go back to the National Park to get the scooters. This we did by hiring one more scooter, which Nora, Eduardo and Sebastian got on and went back to the park. After returning with two scooters, they dumped the (new) hired one and I got on the back of Sebastian’s bike with Eduardo also joining us on his scooter. Once back in the National Park, we had 3 scooters again and went back to Cat Ba to join Nora for dinner.
The next day, Nora and Eduardo went north to Sapa and Sebastian and I decided to stay in Cat Ba, as the weather was so good. This changed after about and hour or so of the bus leaving and so we hung around until the next morning, when we got on a bus to Hanoi.