On the way to Cat Ba island

Emotionally exhausted after the DMZ, finally there was a time for full relaxation at the Halong Bay - descending dragon bay! The Mekka of all the tourists travelling or passing by Vietnam. The place to be, the one and only must see. The only spot in whole Vietnam that got recommended from every blogger, every agent, every person who ever visited...UNESCO World Heritage Site. So it must be good, right?

Halong Bay http://myvietnamtravel.net

The bay is famous for its limestone monolithic islands, over 3,000 of them!

So much for the research :).

Easier said than done! From the DMZ to the bay it was quite a journey. I have not imagined what a hideous journey it will be. The scenario I had in my had was that the best way would be to travel overnight from DMZ to get to Nihn Bihn and then change over to get to the Hai Phong to catch a ferry to Cat Ba island. And then get a local bus to get to Cat Ba city.
First question mark was, was there any transportation going from Nihn Bihn to Hai Phong directly, without a stop in Hanoi. Normally you would think there should be one, right?
And so was my thinking.

Green route was my preferred one, yellow one was the more obvious Hanoi detour which I refused to take.

It was already a beginning of my third week in Vietnam but still I wasn't feeling confident in my abilities to understand the local transportation logic. Travel from DMZ to Nihn Bihn was relatively busy. All night spent on a sleeping bus with size sleeping seat being the Vietnamese size. With the whole bus crowded and overloaded with people sleeping everywhere, including all the bus floor. The air conditioning was so dramatically cold that I had to put blanket over it and sacrifice my pillow to make a barrier to stop the cold from the other fan. But at least I could try to fall asleep.

Some people were watching TV on their phones. Some were making conversations with their relatives. But most were sleeping so finally I managed too.

I got abruptly woken up at 4:30 am the morning after: "Nihn Bihn, you go out! 2 minutes!"
Half asleep, I wasn't even sure if the guy was referring to me. It was pitch dark and raining... after all he might have confused 2 minutes with 20 minutes or God knows what. But of course this time there was no confusion. The bus stopped and I had to get off; My seat was located at the very end of the bus, I was half unpacked, with no shoes...oh yes you don't know this, the Vietnamese custom is to take your shoes off in the bus front and put on your sleepers. No walking in shoes on a sleeping bus! It is quite amuzing to be watching people with shoes on and off, especially during the bus stops where all the bus must queue in order for people to find their shoues stacked on the floor...

I tried to collect all my belongings and head towards the door, trying not to stand on any of the people sleeping on the floor in the same time. Then find my shoes and grab my backpack from the guy who was already waiting with it. And in all this mess make sure that the stuff I am grabbing really belongs to me and not to somebody else! And there I lost my beloved sunglasses! :( I left the bus in a hurry, they probably fall out from my little rucksack at my seat and I did not notice until the sunrise the day after...

So here I am at 4:45 in the morning, left on the street in a pouring rain, with no soul around me. Everything closed, not even a local brakfast places were not getting ready to open. And what next? Well, of course catching another bus! I decided to test my luck again and I was dismissing one bus after another going to Hanoi. I was stubborn and determined not to take the Hanoi detour and try and go directly to the Cat Ba island.

Hmmm "directly" may be a bit of an exaggerated here...

And so after 4th bus stopping on the street to ask me if I want to go to Hanoi and me saying that no thank you, I was starting to feel a bit out of my bravery. I decided to start walking to find maybe a different street where buses would be going different directions, or at least other directions than Hanoi.

After walking a few meters only another small cab stopped, I almost missed it, convinced it will be the same Hanoi story as usual, but... not this time. It seemed I was incredibly lucky. The guy was saying exactly MY town name..Not trusting the guy's words (you know you can never trust certain people when they know you are vulnerable and exposed to their mischief) I checked the bus schedule on the back window. Indeed my town was listed there as one of the stops. Good! We're almost home there! If only I knew ;).
I hopped on that bus and did not get ripped off so much with the ticket price (wow!). As it turned out it was  a mad bus, or a mad driver with a mad crew! Anyway I survived. Another one.

They put me in the suburbs of next town, after 3 hours on that bus. I knew I had to get to the harbour and there was no way I was going to walk there. The locals were making sure I get on a taxi - "lady to far to walk, ship far away, you need a taxi". As stubborn as I normally am, it really looked hopeless to be walking I don't know how many kilometers in unknown direction and without even knowing if I am going to get where I wanted. It was still raining of cours.e At least the taxi driver will know and I would be dry.
And for that knowledge I got ripped of more this time. :) You know it will always come back to you, no matter how hard you try to avoid.

At least it really would have been a long walk otherwise.

Taxi left me somewhere in the harbour. Now how will I get the boat tickets? I knew from the Lonely Planet that you must get the tickets in advance in a box office. But how do I find it? Well it was not far to look for. You could see stands with tickets advertising. Price was not small, for a speed boat and a bus - this is what I understood. A nice girl speaking a bit of English, who pointed me in the direction of ticket sales office, would not go away unless I buy postcards from her. And they were not cheap! I refused, but another guy who happened to be there could not refuse her - obviously she had her pitching techniques mastered against men and not women :).
The next bus was leaving in the next 30 minutes... What bus you say? I was going on a speed boat, wasn't I!? Oh well you know that they need to transport you to the speed boat... and there is no other option but to take a bus.

Before departing I desperately needed to find a toilet but obviously there is nothing like public toilets in Vietnam, where people just stop in the street and do it where it is convenient. How much longer can the journey be, after all it was already more than 15 hours on buses...

The bus was full of local people (again!). All sorts of people, a guy in a dark suit with his suitcase. A lady with a baby, well dressed and quite posh. People with funny luggage (bags of things). Some school children. And me. The road was very dodgy, moving away from the town and getting very narrow. I almost started to doubt whether I got on the right bus or something... Finally we got to the speed boat stop. We all got off the bus and walked to the boat. This one was quite small and fully packed. There were people everywhere, plus the motorbikes, bicycles, luggage, babies and everything else. 40 minutes on that boat - I can survive this I thought to myself. Still no toilets!

Cat Ba town tourist center - main bus square

OK I'd better finish this story with a summary that it took a 24h on buses, taxis and boats to finally get to Cat Ba town. The good thing was that I did not get stuck in one of the places on the way - it could have been more dramatic to get out of those places. I have also heard some horror stories of people getting stuck in a very unfriendly areas in Vietnam... or if not stuck then get ripped of because you are in mercy of the local people in situations like that. I have heard however that on the same route as I took, people got very bad deals for a boat but no bus or a bus that wasn't going the way they wanted... in the end you have to pay big time....

For me, it took just another bus trip - around 1,5 hours, after getting off the speed boat. And there I was, landed in Cat Ba island and Cat Ba town. The picture above. It even stopped raining for a while to let me enjoy the view. The timing summary? I think it was more than 24 hours on the road. But so what? :)

I got quickly checked-in in one of the first hotels on the way and off I went... to the LOO!!!!!

View on the bay from in front of my hotel at Cat Ba town.