Cat Ba Island and Halong Bay

               Finally managed to get enough escape velocity despite all the extremely late nights of going out and traveled to Cat Ba island near Halong Bay with a cool Dutch fella and Quebecois guy. Pretty laid back little island with some good scenery and we spent a day exploring it on rented motorbikes followed by a steep climb to a lookout in the national forest. Very nice. The next day we went on a little cruise around Halong Bay which is studded with limestone cliffs and full of little aquaculture fish farms. Pretty crazy how many people, not to mention dogs, seem to live on these little rafts on an at least semi-permanent basis. Did a bit of kayaking through some limestone caverns which was quite fun and scenic. The last stop was ‘Monkey Island’ which consisted of a beach and a handful of extremely aggressive and angry little monkeys who were far too acclimated to and unafraid of humans to feel safe around. I got to see first hand the scene where a couple other travelers I’d previously met had suffered the fate of getting monkey bitten and having to get a series of rabies shots. The alpha monkey stared at me with a ‘fuck you’ look in his beady little eyes and then proceeded to charge full pelt right at me. Exciting stuff. Luckily I called his bluff (sort of, I was backed up against the sea so didn’t really have anywhere to retreat to) and he veered off at the last second. So basically a half hour of watching them chase tourists around the beach. Amusing when it was other people they were going after. They seem to also have mastered the art of pull tabs as they could open a beer and drink it with ease. Crazy goddamned monkeys.

                The other boys went off on their own ways while I stuck around for a couple of extremely uneventful days reading at the beach. Pretty quiet in the nightlife department on Cat Ba though I did meet this one creepy Aussie guy who within about 3 minutes of chatting invited me to go get a hooker with him. Yeah, no thanks buddy and by the way that’s not weird at all.

                Finally made my way back to Hanoi and re-met up with some Canadian guys on of whom was keen on doing a motorcycle ride between cities that I’d heard good things about. So we booked a bus to Hue for the next day and were off.