📍Cat Ba & Ha Long Bay, Vietnam 🇻🇳

“It looks like Avatar, but in real life.” — Someone (can’t remember who)

Day 1: The hostel had booked the tour for us so we didn’t exactly know what to expect, but we were along for the ride. We took an early bus ride to the ferry and then continued on the bus for a three hour journey, finally arriving at Cat Ba. To make things a little more “Vietnam like,” we casually stopped on the side of the winding mountain road, dropped of a chain saw to a random man, and continued on. Standard.

We were dropped off at our hotel which, from the pictures we were shown, was supposed to be very nice. It wasn’t. At all. And that is coming from the lizard room we mentioned in the last blog. We walked into our hotel and the bathroom floor was wet and brown, there were stains on the sheets, and there was a dead spider spread on the wall. Fancy.

As we were on a schedule, we did not have time to handle the mess of a room we got as it was time for lunch. For our tour, you could choose between one night or two. J and I and one other couple decided on two nights so we all stayed at the same hotel and had lunch together. Good news, the lunch was MUCH better than the hotel. Again, since we didn’t book the tour, we didn’t exactly know what was going on, but we were told we would bike with a tour guide at 2 pm. So, we quickly got ready and waited in the lobby. The guide arrived and informed us the “bikes” are motorbikes so it was time to quickly learn how to ride and continue on our tour.

We went to Cat Ba National Park and did a hike to the most beautiful viewpoint. It was a lot of stairs, but definitely worth it, which is a lot coming from me.

We then explored the nearby caves and biked back to our hotel. We finally decided it was time to switch rooms to prevent getting some sort of infection (switching hotels would have been preferred, but that seemed a little dramatic).

We had dinner with Mitch and Jade, the couple that was on our tour, and decided to go out for “one drink.” That drink led to staying out until 3 am taking shots and playing cards. We bought a bahn mi from a lady running a cart outside the bar who danced to the music with buns in her hand.

Day 2: A bus picked us up as it was time to leave our luxurious hotel and board our boat. Thank goodness the boat was much nicer than the hotel so things were looking promising already. We boarded, met our fellow cruise mates, and all stood on the top deck to watch as we set out to sail (is that boat terminology)? We passed a floating village and had the most amazing views.

We ate lunch and got ready for kayaking through the bay. First of all, the first time I kayaked, I was with my mom and it ended in tears (I was young, we got stuck in scary places, it was an adventure). Turns out, 20+ years later I’m STILL not great, but this time did not end in tears so I count that as an improvement. Regardless of my lack of skill, it was BEAUTIFUL.

Once we were back from our kayaking trip, we had happy hour, showered, and prepared for our spring roll making class. For anyone who needs to know how to make a bomb spring roll, we gotchu covered.

Talk about learning new skills, we learned how to squid fish (with absolutely NO luck) but made a valid effort. After giving up on fishing, we went to an activity we also suck at: karaoke. Humbling evening to say the least. After a few hours of subpar karaoke (at best), it was time for bed.

Day 3: We woke up, had breakfast, and then went for a bike ride (a real bike ride) into the town. We stopped at a “spa” where the fish eat your dead skin. If you know me, you know I could not handle this. Then we went to a shop to try the rice wine…that had FIVE cobras in it. Yes. Snakes. In the alcohol. One of us tried it, I’m sure you can guess which of us that was. We also saw how the rice wine was made in a local home.

Once we returned from our bike trip, it was time for lunch and to say goodbye. We learned a few things on this trip: 1) book your own accommodations when it comes to hotels and, more importantly, 2) Ha Long Bay really is as beautiful as everyone says. Successful trip!

Bloopers: