In Cat Ba, the recent typhoon had left many of the businesses without power and being Island based, all of the electricity was via generators.. Brilliant.. So quiet, the street was awash with vendors cooking over gas stoves, and candles (where they had them, but most of the town was using only the light from their stoves.) Some of the more tourist focused businesses, were open for business.. and the lights you can see are the pearl vendors... It was really cute at the hotel.. We could choose between, air con or water or tv or lights... And only one at a time... Some of our group went out to dinner and it took over 2 hours for the meal to arrive as the power kept going out.. The next day we were sheduled to leave at 2.30 that afternoon, so we opted for a morning row on a sea kayak... Dudu and I paired up... We rowed and rowed and rowed around islands, through caves and into bays.. all of which we were not supposed to.. but due to our skills we were zigging and zagging like crazy... Our local tour guide caught up with us and said that we were strong on account of the additional distance we were rowing compared to everyone else... He then went onto say, that perhaps we'd like to get a headstart on everyone since it took us twice as long to arrive as everyone else did... and that included a single rower (Stefanie).. Nah, we'd be fine... Got to Monkey Island (no photos from here on out) and pulled the boat out of the water... Relaxing on the beach.. Our tour leader got jumped by a monkey (In a literal way not the sleazy way), another tourist boat that had pulled in for a look, was being terrorised by a couple of monkeys who were literally jumping along the beach at the women, who screamed and ran behind some of the larger men from the boat... I'd decided to go for a swim, kayaking the equivalent of cook strait will make you hot and bothered... Big mistake... As I said before a damn monkey grabbed my camera and did a runner... Well so did I. Came flying out of the water, and took off after the monkey who was leaping and jumping down the shoreline... Not sure what it was thinking but I was hell set on getting my camera back.. Off down the beach the monkey thinking that it's companions antics would work, stopped turned and jumped at me... I was running full tilt and kept going at the monkey who then proceeded to stand look at me, swinging my camera around by the handle... then the little bugger let it go, and took off in the opposite direction... I followed the camera into the sea and the monkey went into the tree.. (rhyming poet in the making here)..
So lots of sun (read burn here), adventure, swimming... (apparently Kiwis float well), kayaking and running makes for a long and tiring day.... Now about the floating comment... I love the water, sea, rivers, baths, pools you name it, I'm generally in them... So each beach we landed on Dudu and I were in swimming.. Michelle the other Kiwi would frequently join us, so we'd go into deep water, roll over and float around for a while... Tara an Australian wanted to know if floating was genetic, or just taught to everyone from NZ... We hadn't thought about it, but she said she couldn't do it.. Adumb (bless) asked us to show him how, and the easiest way to explain it was to lift your pelvis when your in the water... Hmmm... there is something inherently wrong with a guy lifting his pelvis whilst trying to float... Told him to stop... Sonny yet again came to the rescue and said that for men, they float best face forward... Now what a brilliant suggestion that was.... We did try to convince Adumb to go for the guiness world record for a man floating and figured 15mins might be something to aim for, but alas, he was only good for 45seconds at a time... (ok, I'm not going to run with that comment)..
Hydroplane back to the mainland and a bus back to Hanoi... Really tired that night.. slept well..
Tutu and Dudu.. :o)
Re: the dark photos, I was using a flash but remember Cat Ba had extremely limited power, but notice how close the houses are to the mountains.. they are scraped to allow buildings to abut them... Lovely place... would go there again...
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