Cat Ba 2022

Cat Ba island is about a three hour bus ride from Hanoi. Actually, it is Bus – Boat – Bus to get to the hotel, and really takes about four hours door to door. It is a little far for a weekend trip, but absolutely amazing for a week long break.

The island is known for a large national park featuring a type of monkey that only lives on Cat Ba. Unfortunately, we did not get to see any monkeys, maybe we should have hiked more than motorbiked.

We stayed for half the week in the mountains in the national park and half the week in Cat Ba Town on the beach.

Explore by Motorbike

Cat Ba is perfect for beginner motorbike riding because there is basically only one road on the island, a couple of intersections, and little traffic. Josh and I had so much fun putting around this beautiful island. It is like Hawaii without the people.

According to the locals in Hanoi, the island is usually packed with tourists. It could have been less crowded for us because tourism is still a bit more quiet since the pandemic, and there was a tropical storm in the news that may have made people stay home for the weekends.

It did rain some, but that is to be expected in a tropical climate. For the most part, the weather was beautiful.

Trung Trang Cave

Near our stay in the mountains was a fantastic cave adventure. The Trung Trang Cave features a 300 meter (1,000 ft) trail through the cavern. It reminds me a little bit of Shasta Caverns in my hometown of Redding, CA except there’s no railings or tour guide to stop people from touching and vandalizing the formations. So, there are names carved in the stone along the way and some broken off stalactites. Nonetheless, it was a really neat walk. I like caves a lot. So quiet and cool.

Hospital Cave

During the Vietnam / American War, this cave was converted into a hospital. I really enjoyed visiting this unique site, it was impressive in two ways: the reality of what transpired here, and way films have depicted this kind of setting so much that my mind was having a hard time believing it was real.

It is difficult to describe the feeling and impact from visiting the Hospital Cave. The concrete walls made any sound echo throughout. You could hear water dripping from the caves and everything was wet. I imagined men in pain and agony, crying out, and the disease that would all permeate through the facility along with the constant drip drop of water.

My brain kept trying to make connections with pop culture movie settings. The concrete rooms and hallway reminded me of horror movies like Hostel. The enormous cavern with a concrete floor, railings, and naked bulbs reminded me of James Bond or Batman. My brain was like, “Hey, this is like a James Bond movie,” and then the inner critic would say, “Stop being so trivial! Men died in agony here! Stop comparing it to a dumb movie.”

Ha Long Bay

One of the most popular tourist attractions in North Vietnam is Ha Long Bay. Most people travel to Haiphong, and take a boat from there, East to West. What’s cool about visiting the bay from Cat Ba, is your boat tour of Ha Long Bay comes in from the southwest towards the east, so I believe there are generally fewer other boats around.

There are thousands of thick limestone cliffs jutting out of the flat green water. The story goes that they are emerald teeth leftover from the Mother Dragon and her children after coming down to help the Vietnamese defeat enemies at sea with fire. Ha Long literally means descending dragon.

Another fascinating feature of the bay are the floating neighborhoods. People built their homes on the bay, go fishing, sell beer, and let their dogs run on the wooden boardwalks.

Cat Ba National Park Farm Stay

The first part of the week, we stayed in the mountains, in the national park at the Hoi Lake Farmstay. It was fantastically rustic. No motorbikes are allowed in the park, so we reveled in silence except for frogs and crickets and gawked at the stars at night.

We loved staying in the park with a trail coming right to our farm stay. The jungle was dense, with questionable stairs at times, but it was also nice that they used stones to kind of pave the trail to mitigate sloshing through serious mud and mosquitos.

We had a cute little bungalow that looked out on the lake. We were the only guests for a night or two, then a couple of Americans came and it was nice to chat with them. Most of the tourists we meet are German or French.

The bungalow was a rustic place and the windows weren’t sealed so we did have a few ants in our bed which was uncomfortable mostly because we started to feel things crawling on us when they weren’t.

The bus from Hanoi dropped us off in Cat Ba Town and we talked with the host at our second hotel for the week there. He set us up with a cab to the farm stay because it was raining hard, and assured us we we wouldn’t need anything from town before we went to the mountains.

We were there in the off season, so the restaurant was pretty much closed except for breakfast. So, unfortunately, we were told, we would need to go back into town for food. The taxi ride to the farm stay was 20 minutes and cost as much as a 3 hour bus ticket from Hanoi.

Because we are Americans, we had makings for PB&J sandwiches in our bag, and the host was gracious enough to make us some noodles for that night.

The next day, we thought it would be fun to walk into town to rent motorbikes. It was a beautiful walk, but it was also 8 miles through the mountains and we were looking a little rough when we finally made it to a seaside coffee stand in town for lunch.

Cat Ba Town

The second half of the week, we stayed in Cat Ba town, a typical seaside community with abundant narrow hotels and resorts along the coast. Karaoke bars and massage parlors call out to passersby, but I’ve heard that often these are brothels so I wasn’t sure which ones were for singing and relaxing and which ones were for, um….

The karaoke bars are flashy like Times Square, and the massage parlors make coffee and smoothies. Josh and I were joined by a couple of friends from Hanoi for the weekend, and we did go get foot messages together. The next day, we got head/neck/shoulder massages, followed by some coconut ice cream, followed by a full body massage. There is nothing like getting a massage, being fed ice cream, then getting another massage, all for like $12 and finishing at 11pm on a Saturday night.

The promenade has speakers hidden along the walk, made to look like rocks and panda bears. At sunset, a message plays and a reverb echo can be heard around the entire bay. I believe it is an ad for Cat Ba and how wonderful a destination it is. However, it is a bit haunting. I have read that Vietnam used speaker PA systems well into the 80’s to promote party doctrine and relay local messages. Some Cat Ba villages we visited still have their speakers on posts lining the main street.

There are a couple of nice little beaches nearby, adjacent to nice standalone hotels on the west coast.