[Vietnam] Chapter XXXV: In which we land on Cat Ba island thrice

From Tam Coc we took a luxury door-to-door bus-ferry-bus combo to Cat Ba town, on Cat Ba island, a sparsely populated island off the northern coast of Vietnam.

Our primary aim was to go on a two-day, one-night (11 am to 11 am) trip aboard a motorised junk (a type of Chinese sailboat) through Lan Ha Bay --- just us and three crew members (a captain, a cook, and a

chaperone) --- a trip that we had booked online about a week before.

Lan Ha Bay --- like its more famous but immensely more touristy sister, Ha Long Bay --- is justifiably renowned for its amazing scenery of hundreds of karst islets scattered all over the huge bay, breaking it into a maze of channels beset by all manner of limestone formations, be they cliffs or caves, arches or tunnels, columns or beaches. In essence, what the Tam Coc region is on land, Lan Ha Bay is on sea.

Through this seascape our junk sailed for a whole day, offering us breathtaking views of the bay and its islets, as well as a sense of semi-solitude, with only the occasional appearance of other boats in the distance or floating villages up close. At one point, the boat stopped to allow us (well, 33% of us) to swim in the warm waters of the bay (much warmer than the air outside); at another, we alighted onto a tiny floating village to take a pair of kayaks and row around an islet or two by ourselves; and at night, we anchored at a fairly secluded point for a quiet night's sleep. Throughout, we were treated by the cook to huge delicious vegan meals (lunch, dinner and breakfast), quite inventive in both variety and presentation.

All in all, it was a unique and memorable experience, which was only slightly marred by the fact that that day happened to be one of the coldest and windiest and cloudiest day of the season, the most striking effect of which was that we failed to see any sunset or sunrise. But deterred we were not. Two days later, on a particularly sunny day, we found a local fisherman in Cat Ba town (or perhaps he found us) and arranged for him to take us in his tiny boat (probably better equipped to fish tourists than actual fish) a short way away into the sea to see the sunset among the islets. But the sun would not hear of it. Possibly still miffed by the role she was made to play in R's novel, by the time we were on water she again hid well behind a wall of clouds, and again we failed to see her set.

On our other days in Cat Ba, between going by boat and chasing the sun, we mostly puttered around the town and its beaches, rested, ate at various restaurants, and made some plans ahead. Except on the day that we took a local bus to the Cat Ba National Park and hiked to the Ngu Lam peak, along a 1.5 kilometre trail strewn with 1,090 steps.

Accommodations:
- Quynh Trang Hotel, Cat Ba (2 nights; ok, with breathtaking sea views from our rooms on the sixth and seventh floors)
- On board an Eco Friendly Vietnam junk, Lan Ha Bay (1 night; a unique experience)
- Quynh Trang Hotel, Cat Ba (3 nights; unchanged)

Photo captions: (a-o) Lan Ha Bay; (p) our boat; (q-z) around Cat Ba town; (aa-bb) views from the Ngu Lam peak; (cc-hh) butterflies at the Cat Ba National Park