Good morning SE Asia!: 01/10/13 - Hai Phong to Viet Hai Village (Cat Ba Island)

Got on the boat at 8am, only 2 mins cycle from the hotel. Pouring rain. Had to change boats before we left for some reason to a much smaller one. No other tourists, only workers and businessmen. 1 hour later we arrived Cat Vieng harbour and cycled 20km to the entrance of the national park, and then another 10km on to Ben Beo harbour after finding that we couldnt get to the accommodation any other way than boat. There was a mountain pass, but not doable on bike apparently. After a lot of telephone calls with the guys at the accommodation, they arranged a boat that would take us and our bikes to the village. We passed a truck that had overturned on the way, all the locals helping to take the spilt goods to the destination on the motorbikes. When we got to Ben Beo, the boat driver said that he couldnt take the bikes as it was too rough (not sure of the real reason but it definitely wasn’t too rough, maybe he thought we had motorbikes) so we paid a hotel 50,000d (£1.50) to look after them for 3 days. The boat ride was about an hour. On the other side we met one of the guys from the Bungalows, and he took most of the luggage on the motorbike. We followed on the smallest and most rickety old Chinese made bikes even made. 6km later we arrived at the bungalows. So quiet and miles from anywhere. Looked a bit rough at first but really nice.

Route Link

Accommodation Link