Halong Bay and Cat Ba

Meanwhile, I have gotten used to the fact that when traveling not everything goes as planned and that you have to be spontaneous and see things as an adventure otherwise you won't have fun anymore. I quickly realized this again on my journey from Sapa to Halong Bay. Halong Bay is located about 2.5 hours east of Hanoi by the sea and is known for its huge limestone cliffs. Other travelers advised me not to take a tour from Halong Bay, but to go directly to Cat Ba Island. So I booked an overnight bus to Halong, to take the ferry to Cat Ba the next morning. The bus would arrive around 4am and you could sleep in the sleeping bus until 6am. So I would save one night's accommodation. Very nice. So at 2:30 p.m. I started with the taxi, was dropped off somewhere, picked up by a car, taken somewhere else, picked up by a minivan and taken to another place for about one and a half hours, where the sleeping bus was waiting. There were warm blankets, pillows and I fell asleep quickly. At some point, however, I was awakened, 'halong bay halong bay' said the guy who woke me up and made it clear that I should get off. My backpack was already unloaded. 'Is it already 6?' I wondered. When I looked at the clock, I realized it was only 1:45 in the morning, in the middle of the night. The bus was already driving away. Great. I then took a taxi to a hotel, which luckily was still open, and the sleepy hotel owner handed me a key and I was glad that I found a room. Simple, not brand new, but at least clean. The next morning I made my way to the port. There I took the ferry to Cat Ba. Here I had great luck with my hostel, which was super nice, and where I met many nice people at the family dinner in the evening. So the next morning I set off with an American and a Frenchwoman - three of us on a scooter, like the locals, and I tried riding a scooter for the first time, which was a lot of fun. Then we visited the national park and a cave. Before the communal dinner at the hostel, we had a relaxing yoga session, since Alex, the American, happened to be a yoga teacher. The next day we started early on my Halong Bay tour, which I had been looking forward to. And as it usually goes: the higher the expectations, the bigger the disappointment - the tour was really rubbish. I found it on Tripadvisor and it had good reviews, so I was in good spirits. Plus, there were only couples on the boat. A nightmare for any solo traveler... and the weather didn't cooperate either. It started raining when we stopped for a swim. There was no greeting or introduction from the guide. However, the lunch buffet was quite tasty and we climbed a huge lookout rock on Monkey Island, which was quite tricky. You definitely needed both hands to get up there and had to be careful not to slip. There are also many monkeys living on the island, imported from Thailand. If I understood correctly, the islanders used to eat them when bad weather destroyed their crops, so to speak, food for emergencies... luckily not anymore... I hope... we were told to leave the monkeys alone as they can bite. We were also told not to look them in the eyes and not to show our teeth, otherwise they would attack. Of course, I still had to take photos. That seemed to be a bit too much for the monkey sitting in a tree and suddenly he climbed down from the tree and started running towards me. I turned around and ran away, the monkey close behind me, across the entire beach, until I reached the sea with my sneakers still on. Then I had luckily lost him. But that's enough, I thought to myself and was glad that the tour was over and we were returning to Cat Ba, passing by limestone cliffs and the floating village. People live in houses right on the water there. Even dogs and cats live there. Pretty crazy. Back at the Secret Garden, my most beautiful hostel so far, I was looking forward to beer and the communal family dinner with the other travelers. And of course the traditional Vietnamese rice wine, which is actually schnapps and which you drink with the toast 'mot hai ba vo', which means 'one, two, three, cheers' and which you repeat three times loudly before drinking it.