Motorbikes, Kayaking and Caving on Cat Ba

After our very dusty and successful trip to the silk village, we booked a tour to Halong Bay from our favourite travel agent, friend (and Chris's future wife) Lily.

We rode a bus for about 4 hours before hopping on a boat to Cat Ba island.  On the way we stopped at a very touristy cave as well as a small fishing village.

Fishing Village

Our first couple of days at Halong were full of rest because Andrew and Candice had caught colds.  Once we were feeling better however, we rented motorbikes for the day and got our first real glimpse of the entire island. We were amazed with the lush green scenery and large exposed rock faces. The roads were practically empty and were in very good condition for the most part. We had so much fun on our first day that we ended up renting them again for our second day. Our mutual highlight was definitely passing and racing each other down the straight, empty roads through the lush jungle valleys.

Unexpected hotel visitor (don't worry he was just sleeping!)

Inside Hospital Cave, an old Vietnamese hideout which was actually a hospital!

One of the many weird bugs we met on the island.

South Cat Ba at sunset

The next day we booked a full day boat tour through Halong Bay and its less visited sister, Lan Ha Bay. On our tour we stopped to go kayaking and swimming, but the most memorable part was visiting Sung Sot Cave. Sung Sot is a massive cave and we were all astounded by its beauty and size!

Sung Sot Cave (our favourite)

We returned back to Hanoi on the following day, which turned out to be quite the adventure as well! Sitting between Andrew and Chris was a drunk, dirty and dancing backpacker who started hitting the vodka well before noon. In order to avoid having to talk to her, Chris spent the entire four plus hour bus ride pretending to not understand any English.