19th April 2010
Typically, today was the first day of sunshine on our Halong Bay trip. We awoke on our island paradise and don’t get me wrong, it was a paradise setting, even if we were woken up at 6.45am with the builders starting work for the day. We weren’t even allowed a peaceful breakfast, with drills and saw benches going.
The boat to transfer us back to Cat Ba island arrived around 9am, so we all loaded our kit back onto the boat and made the short crossing back to Cat Ba Island. We were met by the minibus which took us back across the island to where we boarded a bigger junk which would take us back to Ha Long City.
The weather was a bit warmer today, so we were able to sit up on deck for the first part of the 2 hour journey, enjoying the views out across Ha Long Bay again. Passing through the limestone karsts along with the many other tour boats taking the same route. As the boat came into more open water however, it started to cool down, so we moved back inside where we sat chatting with our fellow travellers.
Not far from Ha Long City we passed by a couple of rocks known as Fighting Cocks Rocks. At this point, there seemed to be hundreds of boats on the horizon.
Back on dry land in Ha Long City, we were taken to a local restaurant for some lunch before heading back to Hai No. Again, this was a sea food restaurant, they seem to be pretty common around here - hardly surprising given their location.
The bus journey back to Ha Noi Was uneventful. It was nice to get back to Splendid Star 2, where we had another new room, which again was very nice.