I was expecting Cat Ba to be overly crowded with tourists but it wasn’t too bad and it ended up being a great first destination. It had been several months since I had been to the ocean so I wanted to go someplace sunny and tropical. Most of this island is designated as a protected National Park. There are some trails that cross the park but most of it is relatively untouched so I really enjoyed the calm jungle atmosphere of Cat Ba.
On the ferry to Cat Ba Island, I met a New Zealander named Craig. We parted ways after the ferry but found each other again at the same hostel a little while later so we planned some adventures for the next couple days.
Cat Ba has a few nice caves to explore. The first we went to, the Trung Trang cave, was really cool. It felt like what a cave is supposed to be like and it only had enough lighting to highlight the formations and to light the way through the cave.
The second, the Hospital Cave, was a war-time hospital bunker. With a concrete construction of the interior, I can only imagine how the screams and crying of patients in trauma would have echoed through the halls of this complex when it is was in operation. The third cave, Động Hoa Cương, wasn’t open. We ran into a group of kids that were trying to get us to pay them for entry but they didn’t have a key to the gate. What they did offer was a secret entrance to the cave that is accessed by climbing the mountain a bit. I tried to get inside via this route but I didn’t have any ropes with me to drop down from the opening into the main cave so we were forced to turn around.
The next day, Craig and I booked a boat tour of Ha Long Bay that took us through the coastal islands to a calm and secluded bay for some sea kayaking through sea caves and then later to a tiny paradise named Monkey Island.
We ran into a French-Canadian Girl at the hostel and she had mentioned a beach on Cat Ba where you can find bioluminescent phytoplankton. The two beaches where the glowy plankton can be found are now private property that is under construction by hotel companies so we had to sneak onto the beach without the security guard noticing and he was super pissed when he noticed. Not because we weren't supposed to be there but because we refused to pay the fee he demanded for us parking the motorbikes there. We did see some bioluminescence if you swirl the water around quickly but it wasn't that noticeable so we left once the security guard started throwing a fit.