Cat Ba Island Day 52 9/11/2014

After a leisurely breakfast enjoying the good food at the Oriental we said our goodbyes to a couple we'd met from Yorkshire who were also on a 12 month career break although splitting up their time away with trips home.  We packed up and got a taxi to the bus station.  We were certainly glad we'd taken up the hotels offer to collect our tickets for us the previous day as it was quite a way out of the centre of Hanoi.  It wasn't difficult to find out where we needed to wait for our bus - just needed to join the other westerners. We must have increased the average age considerably and did wonder if we'd made the right decision to go to Cat Ba rather than the more visited Halong Bay.  The journey to the island took just over 4.5 hours by bus with a change in Haiphong for no apparent reason but being full of compliant westerners we all got off, waited and got on another bus.  We then took what was described as a ferry but was a small boat to the island and then another bus to Cat Ba Town.  The island is beautiful, rugged, craggy and jungle clad although despite most being a national park suffers from litter as do a lot of areas in Asia and beyond including nearer to home.  The weather has been overcast for most of the day with the odd shower but even with this the scenery is wonderful.  Our hotel, the Duc Tuan, is about 50 meters from the bus stop - the shortest distance we think we've had to travel so far.  After checking in we popped to Asia Outdoors, a local tour company set up by two Americans, to have a look at what was on offer for the following day.  We were tempted by climbing but in the end opted for a boat trip and kayaking around Lan Ha Bay.  We stretched our legs with a walk along the front, popped into a bar for a beer and then had dinner nearby before heading back to get a early night in anticipation of a good day tomorrow.