When we planned this trip, we were trying to get a good balance between seeing as many places as we could, as well as being able to settle in a little bit in each place. Hoi An and Phnom Penh were originally meant to serve as transit gateways for more specific locations.

For Vietnam, we had a number of destinations we wanted to see: Hue, Ho Chi Minh City, the caves at Phong Nha-Ke Bang, but none more so than Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay. Instead of doing a day here and a day there, we decided to skip all but Hoi An (our visa approval letter marked this as our entry airport) and Cat Ba Island.

We started our day in Hoi An. We went in for our final inspection of our custom tailoring, arranged shipping, then returned to our hotel to meet our taxi driver Han for a ride to the airport. Han was happily listening to vietnamese music from his phone on the car, which was a welcome change from the American pop music that had been dominating the speakers of the area.

We made good time, and got to the airport with hours to spare. Check-in and security went faster than expected, and our flight was delayed, adding even more time to our wait at the airport. A pack of Spaniards (unintentionally or otherwise) decided to stand very close to us in a freshman seminar social psychology experiment to see how uncomfortable they could make us before we got up and moved to another seat.

Our flight was over almost as soon as it took off, landing us in Haiphong, in northern Vietnam. My heart skipped a beat when the airport door we entered after disembarking the plane mentioned passport control, as we had only a single entry visa, but it had been converted into a standard domestic gate, so we were all clear.

We took a quick cab from the airport to Ben Binh station, where the boats to Cat Ba usually take off from. After paying for the taxi, we were shouted at and waved away from the station, and pointed to another station a half-block away, where we bought slightly suspicious tickets from a very unofficial looking woman standing in front of the ticket counter, not behind it. She said “bus, boat bus”, which was a deviation from our expected boat route.

At this point, it seemed that this was our only option. No other ticket counters were open, so we paid for the ticket. Before long, we were ushered to a bus that took us on a winding route across town, over a bridge, and to another port, where we got on a small boat.

The boat ride that I was looking forward to was about five minutes long— much shorter than the expected one hour. By this point, Jessie and I were both starting to relax a little bit, less worried about being taken somewhere malicious. We were more and more eased by the name of the bus matching the name of the boat service we were expecting, as well as my GPS showing us going in an acceptable direction.

The boat led us to a port with two buses. This presented a sort of logic puzzle that we were happy to gamble on. We must have gotten it right, because after another half-hour of twisty-turny mountain roads, we finally arrived at the port on Cat Ba Island.

We checked in to our hotel, the Full Moon Party Hotel, which HostelWorld reviews assure us is not a Party Hotel. We chose it as a centrally located hotel with inexpensive ($10 a night) private rooms. The room itself was (ironically) nothing to write home about: a large space with two double beds, cold polished tile floors with an impersonally open space. The internet connection was very fidgety. Despite a password being printed out and taped to every visible wall on the main floor, no network actually asked for a password, and very few had any signal strength on our sixth floor room.

We grabbed some dinner at the neighboring Green Mango restaurant. Jessie got an assortment of grilled seafoods, and I got a green curry seabass… with a superfluous spaghetti on the side, and good cheap strong drinks: Passion-fruit Caipirinhas and a white wine / black currant drink. After dinner, we had a walk by the bay, and went back to our hotel to crash.