Cat Ba

We weren't sure where to go after our cruise, and I wasn't up for a big day of riding since I needed to get some work done, so we opted to take the ferry with our motorbikes over to Cat Ba Island.

The view from the ferry was almost better than our cruise - fewer other boats!

The ferry stops at the north end of Cat Ba, so we had about a 20km motorbike ride through the jungle to get to our hotel on the southern end.

While our hotel couldn't compare the Paradise Suites beds, we did have a stellar view of the harbor.

We also had a great view of the terrifying scaffolding that was set up for construction on the building next to us. Those are metal ladders hanging from bamboo poles being held down by sand bags on the roof!

We didn't eat at the famous "floating restaurants" since it seemed like they were largely very gimmicky. Most of the food we had in Cat Ba was crappy, tourist-centric western food. It had us missing the street food vendors and small mom-and-pop Vietnamese places we'd been eating at up until now.

The next day, we decided to take a short hike in the national park. It wasn't terribly strenuous, but we could see the whole island from the top.

After our hike, we took the long way back to our hotel by way of the (unfinished and unpaved) costal road. We saw what looked like a whole village working on paving the road, some scenic coastal cliffs, and a few farms along the way. After a few days of cruising, it felt good to be back on the bike again.