Cat Ba Island

After a tiring trip here from Hanoi yesterday I thoroughly enjoyed my first full day on Cat Ba Island. I arrived late last night and after finding the office of the climbing tour company I booked a hotel room through them and met some climbers who I climbed with today. The rock here is limestone sport climbing (which is what I'm used to in Austin), and is really fun long routes. After warming up I flashed a 12a then onsighted another easy 12. Apparantely I can still sport climb after so much bouldering haha. It feels a little wierd climbing long roped climbs after so much unroped bouldering.

I thought Hanoi was cheap but Cat Ba is half price again. For less money then a 6 bed hostel room in Hanoi I have a room to myself here. A delicious cooked dinner that I could barely finish cost me the equivalent of 4 dollars. I originally planned for four days in Hanoi after leaving the island but I think I may cut that down to two and spend the extra days climbing here.

So while the roped climbing here is great I really came for the deep water soloing. Deeping as they call it here is climbing without a rope over the ocean so that if you fall you splash safely into the water. At the moment the tides aren't great so it's only possible to do half days of deeping. But later in the week when it's possible to do full days (for the same price as the half days right now) I'll do a lot of climbing in the bay over ocean, which I soooo look forward to.

I left my iPhone charger in Melbourne but I just picked up another one up so I should be able to blog pretty regularly over the next week. Free WiFi is so easy to find, you just walk down the waterfront in front of the hotels and use theirs, and now I don't have to worry about phone battery. Expect updates on what I've climbed :)!