Peace at last... in a vietnamese kind of way
Trip Start
Jan 03, 2010
1
16
43
Trip End
Apr 21, 2010
Cat Ba, Vietnam
Monday, February 1, 2010
We have just got back from touring the island on a moped. It cost $7 for the day including petrol. It is a little cheaper than I expected, the hotel is $4 and a meal is about $2-3 which is a nice change after the big spending in Hoi An!
Yesterday we went trekking in the national park. It took us 5 hours of walking through the jungle over steep limestone hills, past swamps, grassy clearings, rice fields and through a remote village where we stopped for lunch to reach the end. Sofia and I had no expectations of what we might see but we were lucky enough to see 2 Monkeys/squirrels (you can make your own mind up from the photos), spiders, snakes and leeches. The leech was a surprise as the guide told us in a thick Vietnamese accent "here now, no lee and no Mojito for many year now" Soon after that information the french guy started to slap on Mojito repellent liberally and a few of us found leeches on our skin when we stopped at the half way stage. I don't think he was that well informed as that was the only information he gave us on the trip. He stank of Alcohol and cigarettes (it was 9am) so we kept well back and I'm sure the animals could smell him a mile off.
We exited the jungle and walked along the coast to the harbor where a small junk was waiting to bring us back home. It was a really enjoyable day out and very hard work walking.
Sofia doesn't like this place too much because there isn't too much to do besides trekking and kyaking but she has been reading and I've been riding around on the scooter. Its quite safe to do so as there isn't much traffic on the wide roads and its wonderful to ride along the limestone cliffs.
Tomorrow there will be a change of plan to our original itinerary. Instead of heading into Laos and on into Northern Thailand we are bypassing that part and heading down to the island of Koh Tao in southern Thailand. This is because the long unconfortable traveling has caught up with us and is getting a bit tiring, so we plan to lengthen the time in each place by making this move. Hopefully that way we can appreciate each place better as I can say I didn't appreciate Vietnam to the full extent as you may have picked up on from previous blogs! The change does mean we miss out on cooking courses and elephant trekking in Chang Mai and Tubing and trekking in Laos but we will look forward to that for another time.
Sun here we come!
