August 2016, Cat Ba Bay. This post was initially featured as one of my postcards in my monthly (haha) newsletter.
Here you have the three experts teaching us how to open crab (without injuring ourselves or spraying crab juice everywhere). It might not look like much, but the meals eaten in this little cabin were the best meals I ate during my trip to Vietnam. The crab spring rolls were awesome. And we’re not even in a restaurant — we’re on a junk boat, floating in the middle of Cat Ba Bay, and this dinner was almost entirely freshly caught that morning by fishermen on the bay.
Claudia, Val, and I booked this 2-day tour across Cat Ba and Ha Long Bay. It included 5 delicious meals, kayaking, swimming, and sleeping overnight on the bay and watching the stars (just kidding, just the clouds).
Typically, these tours get quite packed, and you might end up with 10 people on the tiny boat, but the boat owner said that Vietnamese-Canadian people are interesting, so he decided to book us a private tour and joined so we could chat. Yay, I was useful!
Back on Cat Ba Island, there was a magical scene where Claudia and Val were just looking out towards a party on the beach. I could hear thunder, so I started photographing their silhouettes against this black sky non-stop, waiting and waiting. Eventually lightning struck and lit up the entire sky with purple. One of my favourite photos of the trip.
Thanks for reading!
Part one was here.