We arrived on Wednesday night and thanks to Lisa, we did not land in typical Trevor fashion. In fact we had a taxi take us to a quaint little hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi with a welcoming staff and quiet, comfortable and cool rooms. The breakfast was even something to blog about.
The next day we headed off for our terrain of exploration. A bus, a boat and a bus brought us to Cat Ba city on Cat Ba Island. We brought with us a serious hunger and a complete lack of plans. (As in we didn’t even know where we were going to stay the night.) (As in, just the way I like it).
We walked across the road and we were chosen by a restaurant to eat there. The proprietor had us at “Hello!.” We ate the first dozen of about 100 spring rolls, sampled some free WiFi and washed it down with a couple of fruit shakes.
After our early dinner, a man sitting near by asked us where we were staying. We answered vaguely and we then came to find that this man could set us up with all that Cat Ba had to offer. We paid him $6 for a 24 hour motorbike rental and went to scope out the town and find a place to stay.
First we set out for Cat Ba Beach Resort. The travel sites promised that it would be a peaceful relaxing stay. Less than ten minutes a way from town we arrived to wet crowds marching up the hill from the beach. The resort’s beach looked like the waterpark wave pool on opening day. We waded through the sea of people long enough that we knew that we would were better off looking elsewhere for peace and quite.
We headed back to town as the sun began to set and settled for the man’s first offer – a $20 room on the 6th floor. The price may have been a bit much considering we would only need one of the two beds in the room. But hey, $20.
In the evening we cruised around the town to take in the sights and smells. When we parked the motorbike for the night, our evening activity was chosen for us by a man yelling “yu wan bo rite?” For 10,000 Dong, of course we wanted a bo rite.
As his jalopy of a rowboat we banged up against the concrete steps of the “dock” we carefully made our way in. He was a friendly short and skinny guy with chips in his two front teeth making a upside down v but this did not stop him from smiling. We would soon understand his pleasure in scamming two westerners.
He paddled us out slowly passed colorful fishing boats. We got a ways out and offered us to go over to a boat and buy some drugs. We politely declined. Next he offered us some used clothing that another friend on a boat was selling. We considered but politely declined. We got really lucky with the sunset and watched some goats watch us while standing up on a rock by a lighthouse. It was very pretty.
When we returned he stopped paddling about 10 meters out. With his big smile, he said in Vietnamese what I can only assume was, “Thank you kindly. I just changed my prices. That will be 100,000 Dong, please.” He looked over to his friend who pulled out his wallet to show us a 100,000 Dong bill. We couldn’t be too frustrated as this ends up being $5 US but why play like that. We would have paid $5 upfront.
Our luck continued that night at dinner. We sat down at an outdoor restaurant for some fried fish and beer. Well, we both sat down but of course, I am the only one having fried fish and beer. I ordered, it was pretty tasty fresh Grouper. It was listed on the English-only menu (suspicious) for 130,000 Dong. It was worth it but when the waitress returned, she showed us a bill for 430,000. She clearly had just written an “L” shape through one of the ones and called it a 4 to quadruple the price. This time we were wary of the scam. We showed them the price on their menu and they adjusted the price, no questions asked.
We walked back to our place for some welcome rest. We had a full day of exploring “planned” for the next day.