Cát Bà Island

By far the majority of gringos who visit this part of the world at some point head to Halong Bay. It is a spectacular limestone archipelago in the China sea just off the north east coast of Vietnam (just off Halong City in fact). Rather typically, we decided not to go there, reasoning that it would be hideously touristy. Instead, we opted for the [slightly less] hideously touristy Cát Bà Island. Actually, the island is mainly a favourite with holidaying Vietnamese who come for the drinking and Karaoke bars. Fortunately, they also come to escape the summer heat of Hanoi - and it's winter now, so none of them are here.

The trip from Hanoi to Cát Bà involved a bus followed by another bus followed by a boat followed by another bus. You buy the lot as a single ticket from one company and they operate the whole shebang. They also treat the passengers like so much cattle. At one point the driver stopped the bus and got off for a smoke, but he wouldn't let the passengers visit the bathroom. The buses are that type which feature auto-reclining seats (aka broken). At another point, on the ferry, one of the passengers complained that he was getting wet since the driver had left the door open. He was told to change seats. None the less, after a mere six hours, we were in Cát Bà and busy trying to find a room for a few days.

Since the place is largely deserted, rooms are easy to come by and cheap. There's not much to chose between them other than trying to find somewhere that's not next to a building site. In the end we pitched up at the Thai Bao Hotel run by Mr Victor, who speaks passable English. We nearly didn't stay with him as he was quite off-hand when we arrived and didn't seem interested in our business. Later he apologised and explained that he had been drinking with some Russian guests the night before and didn't feel so good. He was the only hotel owner honest enough to tell us that the entire island would be without electricity the next day. He didn't know why this would be, only that it happened every month and that it was something to do with the government. Despite being forewarned about the lack of power (and hence elevator), we chose a room on the seventh floor with a spectacular sea view and a bit of a balcony. Victor would not go lower than £6 per night! The regulations for this hotel don't forbid animal's bulky assets (which is a relief), but they do forbid "pests in the room". Also, we are reassured to learn that "guests are not cooked in the room". We realise it's cheap to poke fun at people trying their best to provide translations for our convenience, but it is rather amusing - rather like the seafood restaurant down the road from the hotel that specialises in "steamed crap". What the regulations don't forbid is Victor's extended family who all seem to live in the hotel reception including a small child that seems to whine a lot. In its defence, of course, since we don't understand the language, the whines may be legitimate. Also, every hotel seems to have the same feature. Perhaps kids on paradisical islands just moan a lot.

Not only did we awake the next day to no electricity, but we also had no water. It turned out that, in order to turn on his generator, Victor had to turn off the water supply. We're not entirely sure how that works, but there must be some logic somewhere. In the end, since this power outage is a regular occurrence, the island folks seemed to cope quite well with the lack of juice and it did mean that most of the noisy construction work was suspended for the day. Fortunately, everyone ran a generator instead so we were spared a day of deafening silence!

On a hill high above Cát Bà sits the imaginatively named Canon Fort. Guess what? It's a fort and it has canons. Actually, it doesn't, they are anti-ship guns, probably about 8" calibre, with a claimed range of 40km. The place was built in 1941 and used against the French and then later the Americans. Today the site is well laid out with a trail leading from lookout post to gun emplacement to magazine through trenches, tunnels and jungle. It was easy to envisage the Vietnamese running up and down shouting and trying to defend their country from a far superior power (who always seem to lose in the end). The site also affords spectacular views of some of the 300 or so karst islands that make this area famous. Our Lonely Planet breathlessly describes this as the best view in all of Vietnam. Whilst we are not [yet] qualified to judge, we somehow doubt this even though it is rather splendid.

We got talking to a local restaurant owner who was in the army and whose uncle fought in the American war. We told him we had been to Canon Fort. He explained that there were many, many other caves dotted around the island that were still owned by the army and had been sealed up for possible future use. Their locations were secret he told us with a finger to his lips and a knowing wink. In retrospect, we should have offered to "compensate" him for his time to show us one.

Apropos the war, rather amusingly, Cát Bà town has an air-raid siren that sounds intermittently throughout the day. We have not figured out what it is for, but it sure adds to the atmosphere!

The weather has been a bit mixed here so we put off taking the classic boat trip until the bout of rain had passed. Instead, we chose the wettest, most torrential day to hire a motorbike and explore the island. "Hire" is putting it a bit strongly. What we actually did is bung the hotel owner $4 and he let us use his bike for the day. No deposit, no insurance, no test, no licence - what could possibly go wrong? There seems to be a competition amongst the locals to see who can get the tourist to wear the most comedy helmet. We met a big American chap who had been given a red Hello Kitty bone dome and Steve was presented with a bright pink skid-lid. We trundled around the island getting completely soaked and quite cold. The spectacular scenery more than made up for it though. We took a break from the biking to take a hike in the Cát Bà National Park. The actual park is in a sorry state, but this is more than compensated by the stupendous views from the top of Ngu Lam mountain. We also visited "Hospital Cave" which is a cave with a hospital in it! The Vietnamese constructed this large complex inside a mountain for protection during the war. Apparently it was never discovered by the Americans (even the one with the Hello Kitty helmet, who didn't know anything about it until we told him). The hospital was in the process of being fitted out with mannequins, but when we visited they were all sitting in the entrance covered in plastic which made for quite a surreal sight.

Having kept an eye on the forecast and sat out the bad weather, we finally booked a boat trip out to see the islands that make this area famous. Being in Cát Bà means that, not only do we get to cruise the famed Halong Bay, but we also spend quite a bit of time in Lan Ha Bay which is similar in geology and geography but not in visitor numbers. Apparently, there are about 400 boats operating out of Halong City, but only 60 out of Cát Bà - and that's in peak season. The cut-throat pricing out of Halong means the boats don't stray as far as our corner of the China Sea. Our weather gamble paid off as the day dawned bright and sunny. We spent an idyllic day trundling around the weirdly shaped limestone formations on a bit of a Junk. Kayaking through caves and into lagoons was the order of the day. We also found that, away from Cát Bà town, many hundreds of people live in floating villages where they seem to eke out some kind of fish related life.

The day culminated in a stop off at "Monkey Island", which the locals seem to feel all tourists want to visit. This is notable for two reasons. Firstly, for anyone with an interest in late '80s computer games, the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood on this island will be a fond memory. Secondly, our skipper pronounced it "Manky Island" which is not far from the truth. Whilst it does have a fine sandy beach, it is populated by monkeys that specialise in scrounging from empty beer cans and [reputedly] getting drunk and aggressive. There is an advertised hike up a mountain to see the view, but actually it's a 10 min scramble over some pointy rocks. Not a patch on the view from Canon Fort.

We noticed that the locals are winding up for Christmas by installing all manner of festive ornaments and decorations. It was rather surreal to be sitting in the sun at a beach-side bar watching people install reindeer and artificial snow made of cotton-wool. Perhaps they expect an influx of Norwegians.

Despite a bit of rain, we very much enjoyed our stay on Cát Bà. It's a well-kept and rather pleasant resort that was all the better for being mostly empty. The evening walks along the sea front are redolent with the appetising aromas of frying fish and soy sauce. Mind you, it's the same first thing in the morning when we go looking for breakfast, which is not quite so pleasant. A little snippet we learned here is that this sea-faring people seem to prefer to row their boats facing forwards. Whilst this clearly has some advantages over the way we do it, it does seem monumentally inefficient. Perhaps they are built differently.

We leave the mixed weather, spectacular scenery, reindeer and badly behaved children to return to Hanoi for the final time. We still have a couple of interesting things to see there which you can read about next time, along with a round up of our thoughts on Northern Vietnam.