Sunday, May 20, 2007

Cat Ba Island, Vietnam: 9May07

Trekking, Cat Ba National Park

This was a day for exercise. We got a difficult trekking at Cat Ba National Park in the morning and in the afternoon, we did kayaking. The trek up to the peak was interesting but there was a school trip at the same time. So the peak was crowded and we ended up did not go the the tower at the peak.

i paired up with Janjaque (don't remember how to write his name already and i lost his email address later..) from Quebec, Canada, for the kayaking. It was nice to kayak through the limestone islands, but i did not want to be his parasite, so worked really hard to peddle the canoe.If not of this, i would enjoy the scenery more.

Towards this second day, everyone of us on boat were kind of friend now, may be except the 4 korean. 2 pairs of middle age couple. They looked very clean and don't speak very much English. Everyone in our group kind of like had consensus to 'take care' of them. Eg, save the more comfortable seats in the van for them.

i shared room with Pauline from New Zealand. She came with an Australian young couple. They were working colleague in UK last time. She is 30, so we were at the same age range and kind of easy to talk to her.

The group went to bar after dinner and i opt out. The next day i found out that, i missed the fun of them singing karaoke too. :)



On our sailing boat. The top of the boat is a good place for sun tan and just having drinks and read book.



That is the viewing point that we trekked all the way to.



"Janjaque" and me under the viewpoint. The viewpoint allowed only 15 people to be there at one time, but obviously there were around 30 people up there! So it ended up that we didn't go up.



This cave was said to be a hospital during American War. An old veteran soldier is still 'guarding' the place, more to for tourism purposes, such as admission fees and explanations. He made us to stand in line and salute to him like a soldier. Then he sang a "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh", patriotism song to us and want us to sing along with him.



A Vietnamese girl in the trip is obviously the strong supporter of the veteran soldier. :)



We kayak to a 'lake' surrounded by the limestone 'islands'. Some of them just jumped to swim! Due to the closed compound, we got echo whenever we made sounds.


MONEY MATTER:
1.) Food: 22000 D
2.) Sights: 30000 D]
3.) Others: Shopping - 40000 D

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