Along with our wonderful guide we spent our day covering 18kms, climbing the 5 peaks of the park, checking out Ao Ech (frog lake), which was really more of a swamp than a lake, and scrambling over extremely sharp rocks until we made it to the remote minority village of Viet Hai.
Here we settled in for lunch and allowed the past 15km of scenery of the real Vietnamese jungle to sink in. 
It was great having our guide with us to explain things along the way - and as a bonus he acted as a Vietnamese tutor teaching us lots of phrases we know we will need over the next month here!After walking the final 3km from Viet Hai village to the coast we boarded a brand new junk, which transported us back to Cat Ba town. This journey turned out to be the highlight of the day and even more impressive than our 'tour' to the island yesterday. If it wasn't so chilly we may have been tempted to take a dive into the waters that lap at the karst islands - however we settled just to gaze in awe at the remarkable scenic wonder with its golden sandy beaches from the deck of our boat.
As we got closer to town, we cruised through the huge floating fishing village, where fishing nets constantly surround each individual floating home and dogs race along the decks protecting their family's section.
All the while adults prepare nets and deal with the catch of the day, while children play around in old bath-tub like boats.
Arriving back in town we set about organising motorbikes for tomorrow's adventures around the island. We returned to the same restaurant for dinner before going back to Lars' and Anya's room for beer and chatting the night away.Adlibing Cat Ba National Park.
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