Day 54 11/11/2014

Surprisingly the shoulders were OK!  After a leisurely breakfast and chatting with Jackie and Brian we went for a short walk along the headland passed a new beach resort hotel built in one of the three sandy bays.  The views were lovely and despite Cat Ba being relatively small it was nice to have complete peace and quiet.  After heading back we packed up our things and went to catch the bus/ferry/bus back to Hanoi and our overnight train to Hue.  We were both sad to be leaving and wishing we'd planned another day here to explore the national park.  We definitely thought when we return to Vietnam in the future we would staying here much longer. The weather on the return journey was much improved and we realised that the ferry actually travels down a canal at one point to get back to the mainland.  Unlike the journey out there were only a few passengers.  We changed bus on the outskirts of Haiphong and then again at Haiphong bus station.  The buses are a bit old and most of the seats are either in a permanent recline position or gradually recline of their own accord during the journey.  Luckily we could move around to find seats that remained upright!  We'd laughed on the way out when we released that Simon's phone had GPS recalling the number of times we'd not quite been sure as to where we were (aka lost) or couldn't find somewhere.  Our only comfort was the assumption that it wouldn't have worked in China.  It did mean we could keep track of how near to Hanoi we were.  We'd read of a taxi scam at the bus station so headed round the corner in search of a taxi from a company we recognised.  The first one we hailed didn't seem to know where the train station was and then wanted an extortionate fare.  The second was on meter so we jumped in and headed across town.  The driver drove really slowly (for Hanoi traffic) and took us to what we thought was a different station to the one we needed to be at.  It all started to get lost in translation and in the end we got out thinking we'd been ripped off.  This time we should have been more trusting. The north bound and south bound stations back up to each other and he'd simply dropped us off at the northbound entrance. We'd planned to leave our bags at left luggage and get something to eat before boarding the train.  Conveniently left luggage was closed so we went near by with bags and grabbed a bit to eat and beer.  We boarded  our train just after 9pm, met our compartment companions who were a young couple from Switzerland, and got settled down for the overnight journey both hoping it was going to be a little less noisy that the last train we got in China.