Tour of Cat Ba Island

Today (18.01.2018) we took a tour of Halong Bay. We started with a short bus ride to a large boat. Then we drove for about 1 hour on the boat and through a huge fishing village. It was literally amazing how people can live on the water. We stopped and took a 1.30 hour long kayak tour through different caves. It is admirable what nature creates by itself. And also admirable what we achieve. We changed into our swimsuits on the open sea in the kayak, because we didn't have them on yet. That was adventurous and very wobbly :D Then we went back on the boat and had lunch. There were different dishes that we shared with everyone at the table. The boat set off again and we drove to a place where we could have gone swimming. However, like most people, we found it too cold with only 20 degrees. So we watched the spectacle from the boat. Next, we continued to Monkey Island, where there weren't many monkeys. We climbed up to the viewpoint again. This time it was even more adventurous than yesterday. It was only rocky hills that sometimes only had small spots to lean on. Besides, it was so crowded that we always had to wait until oncoming traffic had made it a few rocks ahead. When we reached the top, it was breathtaking again and the way down was torture again. Afterwards, we were driven back to the city. We had left our backpack at the first hostel even though we had already checked out. We went to pick it up and set off to find the next hostel. It wasn't easy to find. Once we turned the wrong way and ended up in the backyard of a restaurant. There were rats, chickens and cats. One of them was sharpening his knife with which he had previously skinned the chicken. Unimaginable!

After we looked pretty clueless, two construction workers and a market owner helped us and we found the hostel. It's pretty dirty and smelly, but for one night that's not a problem. Then we happened to run into our Thai friend from yesterday again and he gave us a few tips, so we went to eat at Yummy as he suggested and for the first time, with his help, negotiated down the price of our bus ticket. However, now we realized that the bus ticket is actually too expensive and we're not even taking the shortest route. It's very annoying and we hope we will still learn how to manage our money properly and find our way around.

So tomorrow we'll leave for Haiphong at 8:30 am :)