-woke up at 6:15, had to catch a bus to Hai Phong at 7:20, took me a while to catch a cab, finally did and made the bus just in time, it was a reasonably nice bus, and I shared the bus with a cute fashion marketer from Berlin, made it to Hai Phong around 10:30. Nothing but factories between Hanoi and Hai Phong, went from concrete plants, to shoe factories, to a massive ford plant.
-Hai Phong functions mainly as a large shipping port, so huge stacks of shipping crates are everywhere and tons of huge trucks, sat at the bus station there for an hour waiting for the bus to the hydofoil which would take us to Cat Ba island.
-its a stretch by any definition to call the boat to Cat Ba a hydrofoil, basically just a large speedboat with bus style seating.
-Beautiful ride to Cat Ba though pictures from the boat:
-wandered around a bit, saw two dudes sitting outside a bar with a bottle of J-Walker black, working on polishing off the whole thing, joined them for some whiskey, cause there wasn't much else to do, too cold to go to the beach unless i wanted to rent a motorbike or bicycle, figured i'd save that for the next day. turns out the guys were both Swiss and had studied experimental physics, they were in hanoi hanging out with one of their sisters who is an expat there representing the Swiss gov't they had taken a three day tour of Halong bay by junk, and were only on Cat Ba for the day. had interesting conversation
-ran into the german girl while i was sitting with them, made plans to meet for drinks later.
-sat on my balcony and watched they bay and read Divine Invasion more PKD
-went to look for dinner, but right as i was doing so the power on the whole island went out, wound up eating a deliciously fresh steamed fish with ginger by generator light, then to the bar where i was supposed to meet the german girl.
-She never showed, but i wound up talking to an Italian winemaker with a dreadlock rat tail and an otherwise shaved head, he was great to talk to, Luca, didn't speak much english, but had travelled pretty extensively, was leaving to Lao as soon as possible, because he couldn't find any weed in Vietnam.
-after talking to him for a while these two great girls from Portland joined us, (i love Portland girls), one was an accupuncturist, Rachel, the other worked with Native American tribes on land preservation, Chris.
-Had great conversation, and made plans to rent/ride bicycles around with the girls the next day.
12/16/2011
-bored with Cat Ba so made arrangements with the guy at my hotel to leave for Hue the next day.
-met the girls at 10 ate "pancakes" for breakfast fried dough embedded with banana
-rented bikes from a very talkative vietnamese dude, Mr. Long or Mr. Wong, i was never sure.
-rode around the island for 50 Km not sure what that translates to in miles but it was a whole lot, up and down hills through remarkable landscapes.
-We ended our bike adventure by turning down an unmarked dirt road, wound up at a very strange private zoo with a vietnamese woman who was very happy to show us around, they had a herd of deer, a vietnamese black bear, the one with the white V on its chest, that they kept in a giant birdcage connected to a concrete cave, a whole shitload of crocodiles, and two monkeys chained to trees. very odd scene.
-we road back to town and checked out the two beaches, Cat Co 1 and Cat Co 2, which were remarkably beautiful but it was too cold to swim or anything.
-dropped off the bikes, went to what was supposedly the best restaurant in town with the girls, had wonderful soup, but really unremarkable duck entree.
-back to the Kiwi bar for drinks, cause there was nothing else to do. ran into Luca, and the four of us hung out again and played jenga and connect four at the bar.
2/17/2011
-caught the bus out of Cat Ba at 9 AM, back to Hai Phong, a bus from there to Ning Binh.
-rode with a German couple and three Canadians, had good conversation again, and we all decided to go to take the sleeper Hue together.
-when we got to Ning Binh, took a cab to the hotel that had/sold sleeper bus tickets, they had mine and the Germans, and the Canadians bought their tickets.
-wandered around Ninh Binh, had an excelent huge lunch as a group, I had delicious goat, and there were free roll your own spring rolls with pork. so good.
-walked around two markets, saw a stand with sliced up dog, bought some oranges, and ate some Palmello. pictures of the dog to come, it was a gutted headless chihuaha, and the heads were sitting right next to it.
-hung out at the hotel for a while waiting for the bus to pick us up.
-the bus that i thought i was going on, with everybody else wouldn't let me on. so i went inside and called the guy that had arranged my tickets in Cat Ba, and turned out i was on another bus that came like 15 minutes later, sleeper buses are never fun, but this one wasn't particularly bad, except for the speakers blasting vietnamese music until midnight right over my head, and the huge russian guy who kicked me out of my primo three seat bunk, so he could share with his wife.
2/18/2011
-woke up to vietnamese music over my head again at 7 had a reasonable sleep before then, we stopped in some tiny town for breakfast.
-then continued on to Hue.
-In hue now, with a really low battery, more to come.
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