Now it gets touristy…

Nguyễn Trãi (Vietnamese Confucian scholar - 1380-1442) says: “Your scooter tank is finite, but the load is not!”

07/24:

A loooong transfer day awaits us, which will first take us by taxi back to Hanoi, then by bus, “Cable Car” (https://catbaexpress.com/cat-ba-cable-car.html) and again by bus to Cat Ba Town on the island of the same name. We start at 9 a.m. and arrive at the hostel at 3 p.m.

In between, we stop at a car workshop (comparable to Herbert's garage in Bausenhagen), as the tires have a problem and safety comes first. Luckily, it doesn't concern any really necessary car parts...

After all four tires are filled with more air (was THAT the problem?!), we continue towards Hai Phong to cross to Cat Ba with the Cable Car, a kind of suspended railway. It’s too rainy for the speedboat, and the regular ferry is too slow.

Extra costs 60,000 Dong per person. Funny enough, the ticket on the provider's website only costs 50,000 Dong, and during the cable car ride, it does not rain (oh surprise)!

Presumably, all transfer companies and tour operators are supposed to funnel as many tourists as possible to Cat Ba with the cable cars to make the construction pay off.

The foxes that…

Admittedly, the short crossing is quite fascinating, especially since you pass over the highest cable car pillar in the world, temporarily being about 215 meters above sea level.

The rest of the trip across the island continues by bus, and it actually begins...who would have thought...to rain again! Presumably, the grayness is also contributing to our horror at the sight of the garbage, the chaos, and especially the countless construction sites during our drive through the main town. Cat Ba Town seems to consist of 80% construction sites, cranes and scaffolding landscapes adorn the city and landscape. We had already read multiple times during our hotel search that particularly hotels around the city center should be avoided (which we at least have), but that it is so extreme, we did not expect.

After checking into our somewhat out-of-the-way hostel, we set out armed with an umbrella to the town center to satisfy our hunger with a Banh Mi. However, to everyone's confusion and a bit of dismay, nearly no one here accepts card payments. This may sound arrogantly western now, but in no way is that the intention. In a place that largely consists of hotels and snack bars (calling them restaurants would be too much), having hardly any option for cashless payment is disconcerting. We are sent away from every bank since they themselves do not have ATMs. So we refresh our million supply at a jeweler, where else, and for Ida’s sake, we forgo a Vietnamese lunch and instead stop by a bar for burgers and FRTTN, which is listed on the menu under “Something familiar” by the way! They are right...

Still…Cat Ba has not really blown us away so far, and we are immensely grateful for our Plan B, which has provided us with two fabulous nights in beautiful surroundings.

After a shower, which is absolutely worthy of our €15 hostel including breakfast, we head to the very nice rooftop terrace for a game night.

Let's see what the night brings in terms of relaxation...

07/25:

The big trip with an overnight stay on a boat in Ha Long Bay is coming up, and as a wake-up call, how could it be otherwise, around 6 a.m., we experience a heavy downpour. The night is a mix of permafrost and Roman steam bath, as it is incredibly cold with air conditioning, without heating the room directly to 30 degrees and 5000% humidity.

Since time allows, we stay in bed a little longer, read books, and listen to the crickets outside our window, which, however, turn out to mistakenly be construction workers busily cutting metal! Quite a resemblance...

The breakfast, much like the entire bathroom (it drips from the shower, under the sink, and most absurdly above the toilet, which prompts us to attend to our business with a towel on our heads), is also fully compliant with the €15 hostel, as there is nothing but toast with jam, rice flour pancakes, and coffee that wakes the dead or rots the living from the inside!

We check out, take a taxi for about five minutes, make the mistake of not negotiating beforehand, so this crook wants 60,000 Dong for the comparable distance of Kelsterbacher Straße 48 - Frauenhofschule. We refuse, eventually agree on 50,000, which is still an absurdly high price for this route. On foot, it's also not an option with all our luggage on streets without sidewalks.

After checking in at the provider's office and taking a short bus ride back to our hotel, which, amusingly enough, is directly across from the dock, we board a slightly smaller boat with 15 other tourists and our guide Ben, which takes us matrushk-like to a larger boat and our accommodation for the next nearly 30 hours!

The travel group is a colorful mix. We feel a bit like in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Everyone is eyeing everyone, slowly the first stiff conversations begin. It has to be, sitting in silence for 30 hours would indeed be somewhat desired, but overall a bit weird.

Unpleasant pauses are filled by our guide with many anecdotes and information about Cat Ba Island, the bay, and Vietnam in general. (A brief side note here: a few of our fellow travelers suddenly flee and leave the deck. Education is not necessarily wanted.)

Until 1994, there was no tourism in Vietnam. Logically - the country was under an embargo. Until the pandemic paralyzed the world, tourism had steadily grown and accounted for 12% of GDP at peak times. In comparison: in Thailand, it was 17% in 2019.

Particularly, Ha Long Bay enjoys great popularity. Perhaps the international attention was reason enough for UNESCO to include and protect the area in the long list of World Heritage sites in 2023.

Protection is indeed sorely needed. The whole bay is littered with garbage. Wherever the eye looks, there’s polystyrene floating and PET bottles drifting by.

The storms of the past weeks, and especially the typhoon with its rainfalls, have dramatically raised the tide and rivers, thus bringing the garbage lying on the streets into the sea and the bay!

You can tell Ben is visibly uncomfortable with the pollution of this archipelago. Whether it be for economic reasons since it might deter tourists or for a connection to nature, we do not know. Probably both, as he mentions that with two tugboats, it would actually be quite simple to remove the garbage from the bays after a storm, but this falls under the provinces and not the state, which for some reason do not seem to agree.

However, they have quite quickly been able to agree on removing the floating villages from the bays. Allegedly, they are largely responsible for the pollution of the bays. Most of them have received no education and therefore have no qualms about dumping their waste into the sea. Today, the number of houses on the water is limited, and of course, they have also been made accessible to tourism. From $50/night, you can lease a place in one of the floating huts. Glass bottom and tastings included.

After a brief briefing and room assignment, we head to the first lunch on deck. There are fresh seafood, fresh pineapple, rice, vegetables, and for the kids among us, fried stuff. The amount would suffice for at least three more groups, and yet there was still plenty left to indulge in gluttony.

After such a feast, jumping into a bikini is not exactly optimal, but vanity would be misplaced. No one wants to miss swimming in one of the countless lagoons between the nearly 2000 islands. There is indeed the option to use the ladder to enter the water, but who wants to do that?! The massively full belly pulls down anyway, so one jumps from the bow into the blue, bathwater-warm water. The temperature of the water actually differs very little from the air temperature (probably due to the shallow depth of max 10 meters), and since there is hardly any garbage floating around in this bay, no guest hesitates long.

Since we are already wet, we then go kayaking for 1 1/2 hours through three caves, one of which is full of bats making an enormous noise (so typical of Vietnam).

We can't take enough photos as we marvel every few meters anew, and even the rain that starts does not dampen this fantastic impression; rather, it makes the scene seem a bit more like a landscape where dinosaurs could pop out of nowhere at any moment!

As our guide Ben mentions the option for swimming and getting out of the kayak on the way back to the boat, Ida doesn't need to be told twice and jumps back into the sea to let the rest of the way be pulled by the kayak. One should sometimes be a child.

In the evening, there's another gigantic meal, which takes place with significantly less communication at the table. All passengers are tired and overwhelmed by the impressions experienced today. While we are still given the chance to go octopus fishing in the dark, there is no success except for one hand-sized specimen.

07/26:

The next morning starts with a shared breakfast and an extra large portion of Pho Bo for Ida, which is so large that we can gratefully feed half the table with it.

Although steady rain was forecast for today, we prepare for another kayaking tour in bright sunshine. The destination is a beautiful lagoon in Lan Ha Bay, which can only be reached by waterway at the right tide. The tidal range is a manageable max of 4m (in comparison: at Mont St Michel it's 15m). Nevertheless, it is enough to completely flood the caves. Due to the rising tide, we have to work hard on the way back. Ben has to help other paddlers with his makeshift motor at the kayak three times, as they can’t get back through the caves on their own; after all, unlike in Agatha Christie, there are to be no corpses.

After a short boat ride, there is another jump into the sea to collect shells at a nearby beach, adorned with a big sign saying “Swimming prohibited,” before it slowly but inevitably goes back towards civilization, where the paths of this assembled family (as Ben refers to it) again part.

What remains is the conclusion: We would not visit Cat Ba again, let alone recommend it as a vacation destination. For our taste, it completely lacks charm and attractiveness. We would recommend the tour with Ben and his employer Catbaventures.com at any time and without reservation. Everything just fit, from the activities, the food, to the room. Rounded off with a little bit of education, we give 5 out of 5 stars.

No sooner are we on land than the next transfer awaits. Even before the excursion started, we booked tickets for the return trip to Ninh Binh. Typical German and naturally frugal by nature, we wanted to save some money. Thus, instead of a “Luxury VIP-Limosine,” we take the regular bus and squeeze into a vehicle that, although the length of a bus, consists of miniature seats inside, where only Ida can take an appropriate seat. We are underwhelmed.

Additionally, the driver seems to be trying to time-travel like Doc Brown and Marty McFly, speeding along the coastal road towards the ferry terminal, but also stopping at every milk can to fill the vehicle. Or does he want to catch the ferry that has already left half an hour ago…who knows!

Upon arriving at the ferry dock, we are herded into a shelter where we seem to wait. Communication is limited to “We der, ca aut,” but as we are standing by the sea, the trip will definitely not continue anyhow.

Eventually, the ferry arrives, all hands move to board the ferry, which either due to its overcrowding (maybe the last of the day?!) or to entice tourists to try the cable car this way, moves so slowly that we probably would have been faster with the kayak, including the Ida brake block in tow, had we had one.

Upon arriving on the other side, we just have to take the right of the two buses waiting at the dock. “Ninh Binh?!” “Ninh Binh!” is all we get as a response. Unfortunately, the driver points at both buses. After showing him our ticket, he sends us to the wrong one, which looks truly luxurious and VIP and not at all like our booked economy class.

But even after showing the ticket again, we are invited into the upscale vehicle.

Oh wonder, shortly after, the chaos begins among the drivers because the lufus vehicle is overcrowded! Who would have thought. After finally reconciling the name list, we are “allowed” to move over to the other bus, which, although poorly air-conditioned, offers at least more space than the shoebox on Cat Ba!

After a total transfer time of 6 1/2 hours, we arrive at the hotel around 9 p.m. and just want one thing: to go to bed!

Good night everyone.