Day 38! A day of driving, celebrating and new friends!

After a great night of card playing I woke up early to eat the free homestay breakfast of eggs and a baguette.

I chatted a bit with an older couple that are permanent travelers and learned a lot about their lives on the road! They’ve been all over the world and were settling down in this homestay for the next 3 months!

After a bit, Harry, Grace, and Valentin joined me and a few other new faces did as well. And once everyone was done eating we played one last game of Uno before Valentin and I headed out.

We said our see you laters (I’m fairly certain I’ll see Harry and Grace on the road again) and Valentin and I set off for our 3.5 hour, 150 km, ride to the pier to Cat Ba Island!

Our drive was very uneventful which is a great thing! On top of that, there were very few cars on the road because of Tet!

I believe most people had already headed home for the New Years, but the ones that hadn’t were waiting till the afternoon to head out.

On our way we saw what looked like an Olympic training center, which I’ve seen a number of them along my travels. But this time I finally stopped to take a picture.

The translation is “Nam Dinh Province Sports Palace.” My guess is it’s a swimming facility or gym of sorts!

At the 75 km halfway point we started our search for food. For the first bit of this search, everything was closed. But just as we were about to give up hope, a soup restaurant caught our eye and it was open!

This fish and beef soup only cost 60,000 Dong and was absolutely delicious! The lady working at the restaurant didn’t speak any English so we weren’t 100% sure what we were getting ourselves into, but so far these situations have all been outstanding!

After eating, some locals chatted with us for a bit, one of which had decent English so it made conversation doable! He taught us how to say happy new year:

“Chuc Mung Nam Moi”

We set back out on the road and with very few cars on most of the streets, we made great time to the pier.

As we got closer to the city next to the pier, Haiphong, we started seeing more and more police presence. One of which was a breathalyzer stop, because in Vietnam, any percentage over zero is illegal!

Tet apparently is notorious for drunk drivers but we avoided being pulled over and didn’t have to have get put into any awkward conversations about why we were riding in Vietnam!

The final stretch of our journey was down a very wide and open bridge which was a blast to drive down!

I arrived at the ferry a few minutes before Valentin and paid for my ticket which was 38,000 Dong (including my motorbike).

But for some reason they gave me two tickets. I realized this right as I was handing them over to the guard and I was confused… but then Valentin showed up right behind me as the guard looked up and the guard said, “oh for him too.” So we just ended up with a free ticket!

We actually ended up missing the first ferry, But with the ride being only 30 minutes, one comes every 15 minutes so we didn’t have to wait long.

Once the new ferry arrived, we pulled our bikes onto the ferry and immediately went to the top to check out the view.

The distance between piers is very small, but the ferry moved very slowly. It was a cool experience to bring a vehicle onto the ferry though!

We arrived to Cat Ba and had a 30 minute ride through the mountainous island to get to our hostel.

My friend Merel from the Netherlands met us there and we went to get settled in. She’s the reason we have beds at this hostel! There were none available online and she asked for us and two beds magically were available!

Merel and I spent a while catching up and chatting about life and then we decided to head to get some dinner with Valentin (who had been resting in the dorm).

While I went back up to our dorm room, I met Dani from Manchester, England who I invited to come join us for dinner!

It turned out Dani had been traveling with two friends who went separate ways for Tet and this was her first day truly solo traveling. So it was fun that on her first day she was invited to dinner with strangers!

Dani and Merel had been on Cat Ba for a few days already so they knew about a great Indian restaurant that was in the main part of the town.

I got a vegi jalfezi with a ginormous naan! It was very tasty and the perfect spice level.

We wandered the streets a bit more and then decided to go back to the hostel for a few beers before the fire work show at midnight for Tet!

While walking around, I got a message from my Vietnamese friend Henry asking where I was at currently. Turns out he’s going to Ha Long Bay tomorrow for 4 days and he asked me to come to there as well! So I’ll hopefully get to see him again soon!

As midnight approached we walked back into town and just as we rounded the corner to the Main Street, the firework show started!

We were near a closed restaurant that had plastic chairs out front. So I grabbed a set for all of us and we enjoyed each others company while oooing and ahhhing at the firework display!

It’s always nice having a chance encounter with a new friend! Dani is super nice and the group we had tonight really got along. It’s always a strange feeling leaving people but there’s always new people to meet that are just as great.

Tomorrow we’re all going on a full day excursion to Ha Long Bay! It starts nice and early at 8am so I have a feeling I’ll be a bit tired. But the cold air and the beautiful views will wake me up!

Happy New Year everyone!

– Elie