We were woken up early by the crew so that the two-day, one-night people in the group could have a shot at a bit of sea kayaking. Any thoughts of a safety briefing quickly disappeared: the group was split into pairs, shoved into a canoe, given the option of a clearly homemade lifejacket and told to be back in 30 minutes.
Not entirely surprisingly, one group failed to come back and the crew had to bribe a local boat owner to go out, find them, and then tow them back to our boat, looking rather sheepish.
Once the stragglers were reunited with the rest of the two-day, one nighters, me and the rest of the three-day, two-nighters were ushered onto another boat to start the second day of our Halong Bay ‘adventure’, the others heading straight back to Halong Bay City after a quick breakfast.
The boat took us to Cat Ba Island where we walked for a couple of hours to a ‘minority’ village. Normally in the most ‘preserved’ and ‘remote’ of villages accessible by mainstream tourists you’re never far from a little stall selling Pringles and Marlboro Lights so my expectations were not all that high, but we were all pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find an unspoilt village with people still bemused by, rather than dependent on, tourists:
One of the wealthier families were in the middle of butchering a pig for the Tet New Year festival (look away now if you’re squeamish):
Here’s me and the rest of the boarding party posing for a photo in the village:
Local taxis (i.e. scooters) took us back along the route we’d walked, with three people to each bike. By point I’d been on the back of a few motorcycle taxis, but never been the piggy in the middle. All I can say is there’s not much to hold onto, you get a good sniff of whatever product the driver’s using in his hair, and any sharp braking or acceleration means the person in front or behind (respectively) receives some form of mild headbutt.
Back on the boat we were given our shot at the whole kayaking thing. I was paired up with a big Swedish lad called Manne and we managed to cover a fair amount of distance in our alloted hour and return to the boat with out the aid of a search party.
After the kayaking, we were taken by coracle to, yes, finally, Monkey Island! Monkey Island, it turned out, was a small island where, if you left a banana or other suitable offering on edge of the beach and the jungle, a monkey might come down and get it.
I have to confess, this was a bit of an anti-climax. I hadn’t expected a real-life Planet of the Apes, but I did feel there was an implicit guarantee of a monkey sighting in the name Monkey Island.
Looking back, I’m not sure why I was so excited. I’d already seen hundreds of monkeys in India. It should have been as exciting a prospect as Pigeon Island but somehow the marketing department in my brain had made me a big promise.
In the end Manne and I found a couple of rather nonplussed-looking monkeys in a tree at the top of a path leading up a hill into the jungle. Strangely satisfied we climbed back down and waited for the coracle to take us back to the boat.
The boat took us to the main town on Cat Ba Island where we were checked into an unexpectedly nice hotel.
Original post by Glen and software by Elliott Back