Is it a cat?

Xin chào, friends of adventure!

A bus took us to the rocky island of Cat Ba in an unusually unchaotic manner. The journey there took about 3 hours by bus and ferry and was once again characterized by sections of road that had us flying halfway through the bus. But nothing compared to Cambodia. 😅 Our hotel room was relatively spacious, but not nearly as comfortable as expected. After the fabulous bed in Ninh Binh, this one now felt like sleeping on a stone. It rained cats and dogs for the next two days, so we weren't able to do much. However, we used our last and rain-free day for a short hike through the national park. Right at the beginning of the national park we found a small gray-cloaked spectacled bird that had probably made its first attempts to fly and looked a bit disturbed. We sat him further on the edge and wanted to check on him again later. (Spoiler… he wasn’t there anymore). The noise was amazing, even if you didn't see many animals. I love narrow and overgrown hiking trails - they remind me of hikes with Dad through ravines or forests when I was a child. Or the time when Lea and I played in the forest with our neighbor. It just makes me a little nostalgic. After about an hour we reached the first viewing point, which gave a fantastic view of the surrounding rocky mountains. The island of Cat Ba seems to consist of 90% gray rock and 10% forest. Even the town where we stayed was practically built on the steep rock faces. A panorama of the dark green of the forest stretched out before us, peppered with gray rocks that peeked out of the forest everywhere. It was wonderful. The next viewing point was not far away, but was a lot higher than the previous one. After our descent, we ended the evening in a restaurant with two Italian women, whom we asked to join us at the table because the entire restaurant was full. We had a really nice time together. The next planned stop will be Hanoi. The heart of Vietnam. I'm curious to see whether the city will quickly become too much for us again.

This is chaos for your travel group.