Kat, Bats and Caves

Next morning (9.29.08) I woke up at 7am to see the tour group off and meet Kat. The Hanoi Backpacker tours also eat breakfast at the Noble house before they jump back on the boat for Hanoi. After breaky Kat dropped her bags in my room and we took off to explore the island. I had worked out an agreement with Mr. Antwon, Ms. Oanh’s brother who owned another hotel and rented motorbikes, that if I sent travelers to his hotel and got them to rent motorbikes from him, he’d give me free motorbike’s for my use whenever I needed provided that I paid for the gas. However I decided to take Tim’s motorbike, an old beat up Minsk (sp?) Motorcycle from Russia. It had to be kick started, had no horn, lights or signals!! It was my kind of bike! As we drove down the road we passed the bunker we explored on the first day and just passed it on the other side was a locked gate with a sign stating there was a cave. I pulled in and stashed the bike in some bushes out of sight; did I mention the bike doesn’t need a key to be started? We jumped the locked gate and walked briskly up the pathway. When we got to opening we were surprised by another locked gate. This time we had to shimmy around the side of it, hanging over a cliff! Once inside we realized we hadn’t planned this out to well, since it was pitch black and didn’t have a flashlight. I used the flash on my camera to light up the tunnels as we cautiously explored the first couple of chambers. I then remembered that my cell phone had a small light on the top!! I turned it on and it was actually bright enough to illuminate the pathways enough for us to press on into the mountain. It was moist and narrow in some areas and everyone once in a while we would hear the flapping of wings swooping by our heads and duck! The passages just kept going and going. We I stopped momentarily to take pictures but was trying to keep a good pace as Kat was starting to get weary and wanted to turn around. We eventually made it to a section where we were being dive bombed by bats every two seconds and had to pass thru a low tunnel that they were flying out of. I decided that maybe this was far enough! I somehow convinced Kat to push thru it with me. On the other side I used the flash on my camera to get a better look around and was shocked by what I saw… there were literally hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling of the cave and wires that lights ran along (the power to the lights was off) right above our heads. I took a pic and then decided to try to get a lil closer for another. I kept inching closer with each picture and was amazed that the bats weren’t bothered by the flash which was literally 6 inches from them. Every once in a while a bat would take off and send me falling to floor to get out of the way. Kat meanwhile was definitely ready to get out of the caves so we turned back made our way out. After working our way back around the gate, Kat slipped on the slimy stairs and nearly busted her head open. She did get some nice scrapes and bruises. I made my way around and in suit slipped as well; I miraculously was able to stay upright as one foot after the other slipped out from under me as if I was running in place trying to get a foot planted. Back on the motorcycle we headed to the same harbor I saw the day before and then made our way to a fish farm for lunch. Jess had told me about a cute lil restaurant on a fish farm where they will let you catch your own fish and then cook it for you. We looked for the bamboo structure as Jess had described it and were more than happy when we finally arrived. I was about to eat my hand and Kat’s stomach had already been eating itself for the last two hours! We were greeted by a not so friendly dog, that later took a liking to me, followed by Vin who was the son of the family that ran the restaurant/farm. He gave us bamboo poles with a line tied to end and he stuck a blade of grass on the hook for our bait. The line had a small piece of styrofoam which was the bobber. I threw my line out and was robbed of my bait three times in rapid succession. Eat time the Styrofoam dipped down I pulled back on the poll but just came up with a clean hook. Vin asked if I wanted him to show me how to catch a fish. I agreed despite my ego yelling “No, I think I can handle catching a fish in a fish farm, thanks” Vin threw the line out and in a second had a huge fish on the hook. He handed the pole to Kat who proceeded to pull the fish in. Vin took it off the hook and let her pose for photo opts before taking it to the kitchen to cook it for us. Now I was determined to catch a fish. I grabbed some more bait and cast away. On my second attempt I got a strong bite. This time I waited a second before I pulled to set the hook and it worked!!!! I too pulled in a fish, a lil bigger than Vins too, if you ask me anyways. Feeling no that my pride had been restored I walked to the waters edge to where I noticed a small wooden boat with a bamboo pole. I had seen people using this style boat on TV the night before and felt that was all the training I needed to give it a go. I stepped in and used the pole to push myself along in the pond, similar to the way a gondola boat is pushed down the canal. The light breeze made it a lil challenging to keep it going straight but by the time I was done I felt I had mastered the art of bamboo boat pushing. Lunch was ready and it was absolutely amazing; steamed FRESH fish with veggies and rice. After lunch we made our way to the harbor I came in at when we pulled up I noticed a few basket boats tied to the shore. These were the basket boats that the Vietnamese used to paddle in the ocean with two oars. I had wanted to try it out so I asked the people how much it would cost to give it a go. He told me 200,000 VND! I laughed and told him 20,000 and the game began. He dropped his price and I slowly raised mine and we eventually agreed on 50,000 VND which was still pretty expensive. The small basket boat had seen better days and had a huge hole up front which let plenty of water spill in. It was a lot harder than those small Vietnamese ladies make it look!! And the wind that started blowing didn’t make it much easier either. I couldn’t even figure out how to do it. I started at first by facing forward in the boat and pushing the oars handles forward thru the water, that didn’t seem to work so well so I turned around. Now I was facing backwards and pulling the oar handles towards me thru the water, but I kept hitting my knees with the handles. Finally after an attempted rescue by two boys in another basket boat I untied one oar and used it like a stand up paddle out of desperation. This actually worked but with the wind we spun around several times. I took the boat back to shore half full of water and in worse shape then I took it. They seemed happy with the 50,000 VND and we later joked that they laughed to themselves “we were gonna sell that piece of crap for 25,000 VND anyways!” We returned to the Noble house and got ready for my night behind the bar. It turned out to be a fairly busy night with a large tour group from Hanoi Backpackers. There were some really cute girls in the group and I definitely doubted my decision to let Kat spend the night with me! I closed the bar around 1am and headed to bed.