Cat Ba, Vietnam- By Anna

Cat Ba was beautiful! On Tuesday, we took a boat to Cat Ba, which is an island right off of Hai Phong. When we arrived, we took our luggage to our hotel. We rented scooters and we drove to the Cat Ba National Park. It was beautiful. We stopped at the Hospital Caves, which were caves that the North Vietnamese built so that no one could find their hospital and the Southern Vietnamese couldn’t bomb them. It was really different and interesting to visit the rooms like the operating room, the old office and the meeting room. We saw couple of pictures of the hospital during the war and saw the actual equipment they used. After the Hospital Caves, we rode up to the beginning of the Cat Ba National Park hike. It was a bit of a confusing hike but well worth it. At the top, the view of Cat Ba was amazing. We took a couple pictures, then we began our hike down. The next morning, we had a boat tour of Halong Bay. Halong Bay is one of the most well known places in Vietnam. After a little bit of boating, we took double kayaks out onto the water. Amelie and I were together, Elise was with my mom and my dad was with Joe, from Germany. We kayaked through caves (sometimes got stuck). It was blast and Amelie and I killed it! After kayaking, we walked around the fish farm and we saw a giant fish that was the length of me but the weight of my dad. Then we all got back on the boat and we went swimming. It was definitely cold but freezing for my mom. It was fun because we could jump off the top of the boat. Lunch was amazing, there were spring rolls, red snapper, fish cakes, tofu and a veggie salad.That night, we went out for a Hot Pot at a restaurant were this young boy around Amelies age served us dinner. A Hot Pot is a burner that sits in the middle of the table with boiling broth, which is served with raw meat, seafood, noodles and vegetables for you to cook. We went to cannon fort for the last day. It was really cool to see the old cannons and the old uniforms they used to wear. It was really rainy ( and yes I did say rain! first rain in two weeks). At the hotel, Amelie and I finished our Buddhism project. That night we presented it in front of our parents and Ellie. Elise was our facilitator. For dinner, we went to this really loud bar and we played a big round of our card game called” Five Crowns”. The next morning, we had to go so we took a selfie with the brothers who owned the hotel and then we took the boat back to Hai Phong. The views in Cat Ba were something I’d remember for a long time!