Rock the Cat Ba... Island

We had a long weekend during the last week in March, so we decided to make the best of it. Our Jiu Jitsu coach, Aaron, was getting married in a city a few hours east of Hanoi. We somehow convinced ourselves that they were getting married in Halong Bay, which we heard was this beautiful, tropical paradise. So we spent all of our time planning on going there, and we were totally excited to travel to the ocean! The night before the wedding, I read the invitation closely and saw that the wedding was really in Hai Phong. I tried to convince myself that Hai Phong was the same as Halong Bay even though they don't sound the same at all  :( We were told by our friend, Nhung, that Hai Phong looks nothing like Halong Bay and more like Hanoi... which turned out to be true.

Northern Vietnam

We met up with two of Aaron's old friends and our friends, Stan and Marilyn. We loaned our motorbike to Stan and Marilyn for the weekend, so they could get around on two bikes instead of cramming on one. The two of us  shared a taxi with Aaron's two friends and rode to the bus station. One of them spoke Vietnamese and got our tickets for us. Everything went smoothly. We boarded the bus and began our journey to Hai Phong. 

Aaron told us that the buses are always half empty, and that was true for a few kilometers. The bus kept stopping on the road and picking up more passengers. Slowly the bus filled with more and more Vietnamese people. After about an hour there were no more seats left on the bus. I figured they wouldn't stop for anymore people, but I was totally wrong! I saw the look on the first person's face that wasn't going to get a seat... he was completely unfazed. Another guy working on the bus grabbed a little stool and placed it in the center aisle of the bus. The man sat down in the asile. You could tell he had done this before. After another hour, the whole center aisle was full of people sitting on plastic stools. It was totally foreign to us... pun intended :) We eventually arrived in Hai Phong and made our way to the hotel for the wedding.

We didn't know what Vietnamese weddings were like, so we didn't know what to expect. Aaron, the groom, is Australian and his soon-to-be wife was Vietnamese. The first difference we noticed was that when we sat at our table, and it was already full of food. People started eating before the ceremony even started. Then, there was a big show as the procession came down the aisle. Smoke machines and fire works went off when they crossed over the pool on a catwalk. There was a man screaming in Vietnamese on the microphone.

The man kept yelling in the microphone and they preformed a few ceremonies. Once they exchanged rings, huge sparklers went off all over the room (fire code.... what fire code?) One of Aaron's friends was sitting next to one of these flame throwers when it went off... he was about 10 cm away from cremation. We didn't get any pics of it, because we were terrified and unable to think at the time.

After the ceremony, there were several music performances and everyone kept eating. Not long after that, people started leaving. We were totally confused. We had been waiting to go out on the dance floor (we had spent several minutes earlier trying to figure out what area would be used for dancing) It turns out that at Vietnamese weddings, there isn't always dancing (maybe never, idk) and people leave as soon as they have finished eating and congratulating the newlyweds.

We considered going back to Hanoi, because we didn't want to stay in Hai Phong. It was Aaron's friend who narrowly escaped death-by-inferno earlier who suggested we go ahead with our original plan and finish the trip to Halong Bay. He also suggested going to Cat Ba Island. Then, Aaron's other friend who speaks Vietnamese said she could talk to the hotel staff and get us a car to drive us out there (it was about another hour and a half East) We thought about it for about 2 seconds... we were going to Cat Ba island in Halong Bay. We didn't totally know what that meant at the time, but it certainly sounded like an ideal opportunity for another adventure :)

A nice black car picked us up at the hotel. It felt strange hiring a private car and driver, but I quickly got over it. Usually when we travel I am paranoid about people stealing my stuff so I always try to avoid doing things that would make me an easy target... I did the same things in Texas. It's just that in Vietnam, you find yourself in a crowd way more often than you do in Dallas. So my guard is always up, but on this day we were able to throw our bags in the trunk without any worries of theft. It was so relaxing, I slept almost the whole way there.

In the car

It was nice not having to drive, navigate, deal with traffic or any of the other fun things that comes along with driving.

Along the way we got a text from Marilyn (we loaned her our motorbike before we left) saying that the weather was bad in Hanoi and they decided to go to Cat Ba instead. They would beat us there by a few hours.

We arrived in Halong Bay in the early afternoon and went straight to the port. All the ticket counter workers told us that there were no more boats going to Cat Ba until 11:00 a.m. the next morning. We weren't giving up that easily. Losing 1 out of our 4 nights in Cat Ba was not an option. We could see an island off in the distance, and both of us assumed it was Cat Ba. We figured we could just pay some guy on a little fishing boat to take us out there.

When I asked one of the guys in Vietnamese "How much... Cat Ba" and pointed at the island, he looked at me like I asked him to eat broken glass. Then he quickly sputtered away from the crazy Americans. Then a young girl could see what we were doing and came to talk some sense into us. She said we needed a bigger boat, but I didn't agree with her at the time. I mean, I could see the island... it wasn't that far away!

Then we walked down the line of boats asking everyone to take us. Some offered to take us, but wanted too much money, so we kept going down the line. I wasn't going to pay too much, because I could see the island with my own eyes! My strategy was to let everyone see us walk away. I knew someone wanted our money and would be willing to deal. We finally found a boat (double-decker) that was willing to negotiate. We made a deal and set out for Cat Ba.

So far today, we have hired a private car/driver and chartered a private boat! I can't let these sort of things get to my head, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it :)

We had this huge boat all to ourselves. The bottom deck looked like a nice restaurant and the top deck had several wooden benches so you could sit and enjoy the breathtaking view. It turns out that Cat Ba is just one island in an archipelago. The island that I saw from Halong Bay was not Cat Ba... not even close. After about 30 minutes floating through these amazing cliff islands, we laughed as we remembered the look on the face of the old man in the fishing boat earlier. He looked at me like I was crazy for a good reason. It took us over an hour, maybe 2 hours, to get to Cat Ba on a very large boat; I don't think we would have survived the trip on the little fishing boat, and the old guy knew it :)


Traveling through these small islands made us wish we had a professional camera, because you just can't see the colors in the pictures from our iphone. The green trees were so thick on the islands that it looked like they were covered in tons of moss. There were no beaches on most of them. Cliffs just shot straight out of the water several meters high. It looked like something out of Lord of the Rings!

It looked like a maze - crazy beautiful!

The dragon on our boat

My gorgeous bride on the boat :)

On the upper deck

Sweethearts inside the cabin :) Hi Everyone!  This is Jenni and I have to add that we had such a wonderfully romantic time on the boat too!  During the ride Johnny played one of the first songs we danced to at our wedding and asked me to dance!  The whole dining room became our dance floor and it was such a special time - marital bliss!  (Our private guide that we were having tea with even left for a bit so we had the whole place to ourselves.)  We are so fortunate to have one another and to be so happy and healthy :)  We are very much enjoying starting our lifetime of adventures together and want to thank everyone again that loves and supports us so much!!

The fog and darkness started setting in....

We were on the boat so long that it got very dark and we could only see the faint silhouettes of the surrounding islands. Then we saw this light in the picture below. It was the north pier of the island. All of the hotels were on the south end, 30 km away. So we hoped there would be a taxi there, because we didn't come during a scheduled boat ride.

When we reached shore, there was only one taxi driver there. He wanted a ton of money and wasn't willing to negotiate. Jenni was worried (so was I, but I wasn't going to show it to the driver) so I told her that we would pretend to start walking the 30 km to get the guy to come down. I knew he had an advantage, because he was the only taxi, in the middle of nowhere, but I also knew that I had the advantage of pretending to be stupid :) I also knew that he needed to drive back anyway, so he might as well make some money. We took about 12 steps before he stopped us and negotiated a reasonable price. I think part of the reason he stopped us was because he thought we would get lost and/or hurt :) Victory yet again!

We met up with Stan and Marilyn and got a room with a balcony view of the beach. It was the perfect view for the dragon dance and fireworks show that Jenni wrote about before. Here are some pics of Cat Ba:

Jenni says this was actually from when we went out to dinner  a little before the Cat Ba trip

Some scary-looking critters

A parade went down our street

The Dragon Dance

The only thing left to tell you about was our "guided tour" that was supposed to take us kayaking and then to a lovely little place called Monkey Island. That colorful story is going to have to be a blog post all by itself :)

Thanks for reading,

Johnny

I got into an argument with this little guy... I'll write about it soon