Exploring Cat Ba Island

As you may have noticed by now I really love to hike, especially in woods in some remote areas of the world. And so, being on the Cat Ba Island where a huge national park is located I took the opportunity to get lost in the woods ;) As we didn’t want to book a tour (there are plenty of organized tours to the park), we just bought a one-way bus ticket to the park and figured we will find our way back.

The rocky path leads through forest (jungle kind of). As soon as we got to the park, it started to rain (everywhere I go it rains on me...) It was a pretty steep hike in constant rain. We climbed up a hill – through the woods, on that slippery, muddy path. Near the top we took the wrong path (well, ok it was me, I took the wrong way) and landed in really thick woods and there were... empty plastic bottles everywhere. Yeah, tourists littering. I really don’t get it. Is it that hard not to litter in a beautiful national park?!

Anyways, at the top there was a watch tower that looked like it was about to fall, we climbed it and the view was magnificent. Lush green hills. I didn't mind the rain. The landscape was scenic.

On our way back we’ve met some other travelers and it turned out they were heading back to Cat Ba town on a bus and had two spare places :)

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On a small street in front of a street restaurant with those tiny plastic chairs we saw a man cutting a peeled... dog. I know they eat dogs over there, but still it was shocking! This picture will hunt me :/

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At one of the piers I’ve noticed people playing an arcade game (flipper kind of thing, have no idea how to call this one in English). I had to try. Kind of difficult when you don’t know the rules and have no one to ask. Well, I gambled and I lost. 10,000 (local currency - dong, which is like 50 cents maybe :) And I managed to... damage the machine by putting apparently too many coins in. They were able to fix it finally, weren’t happy about my performance though.

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In Cat Ba I had the best spring rolls ever. Btw, food in Vietnam is delicious. Not only the variety of the ‘pho’ soups but also rice, seafood, vegetables, spring rolls. I loved it. And during my stay I only used chopsticks. Well, first two days I thought I starve there eventually cause my attempts to eat rice (regular not sticky rice) with chopsticks looked rather pathetic. After few days I got it though and even if it took awhile ;) I was really proud of myself.

In Vietnam I also had the worst food ever – something really disgusting that I guess not everyone would eat. Keep in mind that I have eaten insects and spiders before – but that’s nothing compared to what I was about to try in Vietnam...