We were glad to get away from the chaos of the city for our 3 day trip to Halong Bay, which is about 3 hours from Hanoi. We hadn't realised quite how touristy it would be though, apparently about 2000 tourists a day! We arried to a harbour packed full of junks. Ours turned out to be pretty plush with air con cabins, sun deck and good food! Unfortunately the weather was pretty cloudy/misty/air pollution so we didnt see Halong Bay at its best but it was nice to relax for a bit. Halong Bay was ery similar to Ang Thong marine park with steep limestone cliffs rising out of the water, but on a much larger scale (about 2000 islands). We visited a large cave, a local floating village and went kayaking through an arch to a much cleaner bit of water (as the junks couldn't get through!)

The next day we headed to Catba Island which again was a bit of a disappointment - a tourist trap with lots of highrise hotels. Although we were lucky that it wasn't peak season and we found some nice beaches despite lack of sun! We also visited Hospital Cave on the island which was really interesting - a cave that the Vietnamese had converted into a hospital during the war. Obviously they were not allowed to leave at anytime so that they were not spotted by the Americans - it was quite chilling to see the conditions that they would have had to stay in. The hospital also had a tiny swimming pool for all the inhabitants to do their daily 2 lengths worth of exercise in!

On our final day we reboarded our junk and headed back through Halong Bay to the harbour, where we had a delicious Vietnamese buffet lunch before being bussed back to Hanoi, where we waited for a few hours to catch an overnight train to Sapa, in the north west mountains.