Day 25. Flight home.

So to continue and finalise our last day on board our ship, The Victory Star, we wake up early (or rather I wake up and wake Julie up, in time for sunrise, and we watch the red sun rise over the horizon of the Gulf of Tonkin, in our jim-jams. (It may only be 5.40am but there is plenty of time to sleep on the flight back home tonight - yeah right!!).

Next up is Tai Chi on the top deck, at 6.30am. Julie participates with 5 other ladies (and one man, not me!) before we sit down for Breakfast part 1 - orange juice, coffee/tea, pastry and a croissant. Then we are 'up and at it' for an early morning cave visit at 7.30am.

We visit a large cave system on (or rather in) one of the limestone islands. We wander through a labrynth of tunnels deep in the bowels of our rock for some 30 minutes, viewing all manner of stalactites and stalacmites. which, if you use an awful amount of imagination (and I mean an awful awful large amount of imagination) resemble a cat or a dog or a man with his bride (although she didn't look much of a 'looker'). Lacking imagination I had trouble seeing any of these shapes, although the only one I could clearly see was 'the linga' (avid readers of this blog who looked up the meaning of a linga will know what this was!).

Then it was back to the boat for breakfast part 2 - egg (fried and/or omelette), bacon, sausage, fried rice, noodles, dim sum, pork soup, sphagetti carbonara (yes for breakfast), spring rolls, soup, steamed vegetables, fruit, fruit juice, coffee/tea ...oh and yoghurt.

The boat was chugging back by now, so there was only time to settle up our 'bar tab' of two long island iced teas for Julie and sprite for me (or was it the other way round?). Then a final take in of the scenery before we disembarked, where our guide was waiting for the nail biting, roller coaster, death-defying, ride back to Hanoi.

So here I sit, or should I say lay, typing the penultimate blog entry. If I get bored and find a connection at the airport, I may post one final Reflections on our trip', if you can bear one more read.