Andy is still not well – energy levels are down and he has a temperature. But he struggles on gamely. Today we change to a smaller junk leaving six of our fellow travellers behind; they are returning to Hanoi today whilst we are visiting Cat Ba National Park and will stay overnight in hotel in Cat Ba town. Cat Ba is the largest of the island in Halong Bay and approximately 50 percent of it is a designated National Park. This morning we are doing a two-and-an-half hour trek through the park jungle with our guide Hien. There is a track of sorts, but it is quite a scramble over rocks and rough terrain with some steep climbs and descents – no one warned us beforehand! It is worth the effort however, even though we don’t see any wild life apart from the odd spider. In the afternoon we have just about enough energy left for a short kayak trip, although Andy can hardly manage to paddle the short distance to another enclosed lagoon. All he wants to do is lie down and sleep.
One of our group turns out to have a fear of snakes and is all for turning back at the start of our trek. I must admit the it does look daunting, but, too late the junk has left and there is no mobile signal. She’s faced with continuing the trek or sitting tight and hoping that a some point during the trek our guide can get a signal and arrange for the junk to come back and pick her up. Sensibly she decides to continue. During the trek we stop for a break at a clearing in the jungle which is home to an old couple who retreated here from Hanoi 19 years ago. They live a very basic existence in an open-sided shelter with a thatched roof, their only furniture a platform bed and a table and two very narrow benches. Alongside is a smaller shelter for cooking over an open fire. They survive on the fruit and vegetables they grow on the surrounding land and the eggs from the few chickens they keep – presumably supplemented by fish from the sea. We are invited to take a seat at the table and while the old man scales a bamboo ladder to pick half a dozen mandarin oranges for us to savour.
The kayak trip turns out to be something of an ordeal. Unlike yesterday we do at least have proper kayaks but the paddles are made of wood and are ridiculously heavy probably because they are water-laden. This combined with Andy’s lethargy and our general tiredness from this morning’s trek makes the short trip hard work.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Halong Bay is the floating fish farms. The locals live in floating houses which are little more than huts usually with a wooden veranda, a couple of dogs and a network of fish nets strung from a horizontal bamboo structures all of which are kept afloat on either oil drums or some other highly buoyant material. Approaching Cat Ba town there is a huge floating fishing village hugging the cliffs of the island complete with floating shops!
We spend the night at the Holiday View Hotel in Cat Ba town. This is a tower block on the sea front and our room has a good, if partial, view of the bay and the many working boats harboured there. The town itself is quite small and we take a short walk along the front stopping for dinner in one of the many restaurants that line the seafront road.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Long_Bay