We were picked up early on the 23rd after a hearty breakfast of laughing cow cheese on a fresh baguette and shepherded onto a minibus made for midgets! I had to squeeze in to say the least. When we stopped for the tour to earn comission as we bought stuff from a handicraft fair it is fair to say that I had cramp, but there was no option but to continue (especially as we were in the middle of nowhere).

Once we arrived in Halong City (if you can call it that, it's more a row of hotels opposite an even bigger row of boats) and boarded our ship. This consisted of balancing on a narrow ramp (not enough room to stand with your feet together) that was at a 70 degree angle (quite a challenge I can tell you). Once we set off it was time for dinner (fish and squid, which we would get used to eating over the next few days).

Wethen went to an island with two large caves to walk through, and after the cave in Guilin we didn't expect too much. We were surprised when they were quite impressive. This was followed by an hour of kayaking in which we were so in sync we crashed in to the pier, but eventually started to go faster than the big boats (which was a good job or they would have gone over us). We searched for a promised cave to kayak through but failed to find it!

Once back to the floating village (where we had kayaked from) we saw the crew climbing aboard with some fresh seafood bought from the family (you would have been in heaven mum), including a couple of live squids. This food became our tea (and rather surprisingly the squid wasn't that bad). Before we ate this however there was time for a swim (avoiding the oil leaking out of our ship!) and to jump off the top deck (about the size of a house). As I jumped off the side Sarah decided it was dangerous and would climb down the stairs to the first deck and jump from there. As I climbed back aboard, I found the crew surrounding an hysterical Sarah. She had slipped on the second step and bounced to the bottom on her back (which is now a reddy purple colour) but this was always going to happen as she seemed to trip on every other stair case on this trip so far.

The day was not over yet as after a brief period drinking on the deck we heard the crew doing karaoke (the Asian favourite) so Sarah and I decided to start the ball rolling (again!!). That night the crew (who are a family that live on the ship all the time) slept in the dining room while we sat on deck drinking till 3 in the morning.

We were up at 7 the next morning for breakfast, everybody looking a little worse for wares, and to head to Cat Ba island for the day. Once landed we went to a nature reserve although Sarah's back was hurting after the fall (and I was hung over! so we didn't do the walk.

Once checked into our hotel we all decided to try and get some sleep (it was meant to be for a couple of hours but turned into all day). That night we found a "jazz bar" (it didn't play jazz) and had a couple of drinks. That was the plan anyway but the bar tender had other ideas and provided us all with large measures of what we thought was vodka, although afterwards realised he was filling them out of a large unmarked plastic container so it could have been paint stripper for all we know. We can still all see though so it can't have been that bad (can it!?).

The ferry ride back to the mainland the next day was a subdued affair where everyone was tired and either slept or admired the incredible scenery in silence. Maybe I should have mentioned the scenery earlier but so much seemed to happen that I neglected to mention the views, which were as impressive as we both expected.