Thursday, November 25, 2010

the Sea - Cat Ba Island

Dear All,

We arrived to Cat Ba Island (aka the Island with a thousand peaks - thats my description, you'll see why below!) on Tuesday. Cat Ba Island is the largest island in Halong Bay and it enjoys similar natural wonders as the whole of the North East Vietnam including beautiful national parks coated in jungle, sandy beaches and of course, the highly acclaimed limestone islands (of which there are around 300 or so surrounding Cat Ba). On arrival, we took it easy and enoyed the sunset (with some clouds and haze) over a few beers.


View from our balcony.

The after sunset view with the haze - the view from the hotel.

The very bright (and horrible) neon light display after dark!

The next day we decided tostay on land and explore the island with a motorbike - a lot of fun! Words (especially written by Mitch) cannot really describe the beauty of the island and therefore we'll simply show photos - some are caption but not all, due to time constraints.

Motorbike shot.







When the sun is out a little.


Lunch!

Freshly caught prawns (shrimp!!)







The next day we decided to explore the area by boat - the beautiful and somewhat mystical Lan Ha Bay - unfortunately the sun did not want to play - however this did not detract from the spectacular scenes we were able to see.













Today, our final day before boarding the boat back to Haiphong and onto Hanoi for our overnight train to Hue, Central Vietnam, we went for a hike in Cat Ba National Park and from a peak, we enjoyed many panoramic views of the island (with the thousand peaks). Climbing up the lookout was the frightening experience, and mum, you would definitely not enjoy this.



Holding on tight!




A few of the planks were missing/broken-no biggie.


The tower!


So, we're now waiting for our bus to start the journey back to Hanoi and onto Hue. We'll give you an update from Central Vietnam.

Jen and Mitch

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