Middle-aged flash packers

I have discovered that Vietnam does indeed produce its own wine. It started in French colonial times but had a boost when Australian wine companies got involved in the early 2000’s. Most grapes are grown between the Central Highlands and the coastal areas of Central Vietnam. So now we know. And it’s perfectly quaffable.

Today was the day of the night kayaking trip, specifically to see the bioluminescence emitted by plankton.

As you already know , one of the things that has been frustrating us about Vietnam is the need to be involved in a tour to do just about anything. In the future I can imagine a trip to the loo will be exactly that – a tour guide to tell you how the toilet was made, the dos and  donts about flushing your paper and a meal served after you’ve been. That’ll be 600000 Dong please. 

The kayaking was no exception. We  couldn’t just go out with someone who could provide a kayak and knew where to see the plankton. Oh no, we had to be collected from our hotel at 4pm, visit something, maybe swim, eat and then eventually kayak, to be deposited back at our hotel at 9pm. Far too long but your money is wanted and the local tour operators obviously feel they have to do more to justify the price. We don’t care. We’ll pay what you want. Just cut to the chase.

After being collected we boarded one boat and then after 10 minutes, had to get on another one for no apparent reason. We were then taken  to visit a fishing “village” homestay (it was just  one homestay on its own) shown a couple of rooms and some fish and were told we had an hour to spend exploring it.

An hour?! It took less than 5 minutes to walk round it and that was done at a snail’s pace. The 4 of us on the trip mutinied and got back on the boat. This left our tour guide Ling in rather a difficult position but he graciously accepted that we would all rather drink tea and beer on the boat than awkwardly stand around on a floating fishy homestay for an hour.

Emboldened, we asked Ling to bring forward dinner so that we could kayak earlier. This was not going well for poor Ling but he compromised and got the chef cooking while we chatted to our new friends Ellie and Annie. 

We were all a bit wary of eating the dinner when it arrived. Lots of seafood obviously as there was a definite fishy theme going on. With prawns and oysters dodgy at the best of times, S had earlier poked his head into the galley which he thought was grubby and we had all seen the bedrooms supposedly for overnight guests which were in a right mess.  

Still, we braved the fish and the hotpot, sampled the prawns and oysters but avoided anything uncooked. (The oysters are served cooked here and they are delicious).

At last, time for the kayaking and the bioluminescence! The drizzle stopped and the temperature felt pleasant. Mind you, I was wearing a T-shirt, fleece, waterproof jacket and a life jacket- it’s not been warm. 

As we dipped our oars into the water, we could see sparks in the water from the plankton. plankton emit bioluminescence when they are disturbed to scare off predators.  The effect of our paddles surrounded by lots of tiny little glowing lights was magical. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see fireflies in a forest, plankton luminescence is very similar except in the water.

Ling led us into a bay surrounded by karsts and  got us to turn our head torches off.  It was slightly scary but also very special kayaking in total darkness other than the luminescence. Annoyingly we didn’t get any decent photos but the memories are what count and it was ALMOST worth all the faffing about.

We were all pretty wet when we got back but totally worth it.

Ling had got the message and so we didn’t hang around, we chugged back to shore and said goodbye to the girls – if you’re reading this, good luck with the rest of your trip both of you and extra special best wishes to you Annie for your wedding when you get home. 

And that is Cat Ba pretty much done.