We hastily departed Monkey Island Resort at 8:30am this morning, followed by a short bus ride back to Cat Ba where we were greeted by the many small vendors fighting to sell weary travellers bottles of water or boxes of Mr Potato (similar to Pringles) chips. Because of Tet, we didn't get to do our morning activity since our guides were keen to get home to their families to celebrate this important time of year with their loved ones... this was fine with us, since we weren't really up for touring after a rather big night on the local rice vodka. It was a very long and seedy six hour bus ride back to Hanoi, but we had a great night getting to know our 9 travel companions over 5 bottles of vodka negotiated at 250,000 Dong (equivalent to $12.50) a bottle. Not feeling too bad now considering how much we drank!
I forgot to mention in my previous post that yesterday we took the kayaks out and toured the limestone karst lanscape around Monkey Island for a couple of hours. Josh had is own double kayak and I went with Helen (another new travel buddy). We discovered floating villages and every household had at least one, but up to 5 dogs!! Very funny! Kayaking thru this floating village and all you could hear was dogs barking and crazy trance music blaring. I don't know if it's special holiday music or whether it is what they listen to all of the time?? Helen's oar was broken though (one of the ends was on the wrong way) so our kayak was constantly turning right. Ah well.
We've found our accommodation for the night, a little place called 'the Real Darling Cafe'.... Lonely Planet says that it's possibly as old as the old quarter itself. We're hoping this is a good thing?
Photo's to come!
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