We woke up to our alarms at 7AM and I think we would be lying if we said we wasn't still a bit drunk. We went down stairs for our free breakfast of 'egg and bread' as they call an egg baguette with no butter or anything so I guess they are right it is just egg and bread! After getting that down us we went next door to the agent we booked the Halong Bay boat trip with.

There are all sorts of different types of boat trips to Halong Bay with all different prices, we booked a 2 day, one night 'party boat' for 1.1 million Dong which is about 31 quid. We were speaking to people about what we booked the night before and everyone seemed to suggest the 'Castaways' trip. That one is booked through the hostel where the bar is, its just over twice the price but everyone was saying its definitely worth it, So we kind off had a feeling that we may be about to experience our first little con!

We had to get a 3 hour bus to Halong bay first, so we used that time to try and catch up on a bit of sleep from the night before, but that proved virtually impossible due to the bumpiness roads ever and the constant beeping of all the cars and bikes! Once we were there we met our 'English speaking guide', the first lie the rep had fed us, he could speak very vague English. He only knew what was always said, if we had any questions for him he literally had no idea! But anyway on the boat we got, which was completely different to the pictures in the brochure, the brochure pictures looked amazing though so we wasn't really expecting that!

Once we had set off we began to get an idea of who was on the boat, a 50 year old Belgian couple with the blokes mum, an English bloke on his own who was about 30, a 50 year old Swedish couple with their 2 daughters, a Scottish couple who were our age and a 19 send 20 year old couple of girls from Norway. This is when we figured out there would be no partying happening, turns out we were the only group that got told this anyway which everyone else thought was brilliant! We were hanging so we wasn't as bothered as we would have been if we had gone in early last night.

Halong Bay is a massive group of over 200 small islands, we stopped at one to go inside a cave! It was huge, none of us had really been In a proper cave before, it was amazing, it is kind of a shame it had been made so touristy with all of the lights and stuff but it did look cool!

After exploring the cave we get back on the boat and have a bit of lunch, standard rice, chicken, fish and tofu(no one ever eats the tofu). We then went to a floating village, this is a small village of people that live on their own individual floating shack with their family and a lot of them their dog! Some of them are born here and never leave, one member of the family leaves to get food and that is it! We get off the boat again here and get to go on kayaks! We were told this was included in the price but we had the pay 30000 Dong for 'Environmental management' apparently. Its less than a quid but it's the principle, we tried to not pay but they were having none of it. They are double kayaks, so Lloyd and Tim went together and Ben went with the bloke on his own, Lee his name was. The kayaks were fun going, around all the peoples floating houses saying hello, getting barked at by dogs, and exploring small caves. Lloyd and Tim, more so Tim did have a bit of a scare at one point, we saw a dog on someone's floating house and it had a puppy so we went a bit closer to get a picture of the puppy but before we knew it we were way to close, the big dog was going mental, we had to go under the guide ropes, the dogs mouth must have been six inches from Tim's hat. Close call!

We had half hour on the kayaks then back on the boat. We were sitting on the top deck with lee. We would love to rub it in and say we were catching some rays on the sunloungers, but we wasn't, we were in jeans and hoodies, it was freezing. North Vietnam is not the hottest place! But we thought we better enjoy the scenery rather than sit inside! The tourguide, 'Butterfly' he called himself kept coming up on the phone and looking at his paperwork, and you could tell something wasn't right. Some asked him what was wrong, after repeating that god knows how many times, louder and slower every time, we finally got an answer out of him, theres one to many people on the boat for the amount of rooms! We thought oh dear that's not good but its not our problem. Until about half hour later when everyone was called together to check into their cabins. He explained that everyone is In a room but one of us three has to share with the 50 year old Belgian bloke!

After a bit of arguing from both partys because we were both told we would have triple rooms, we realised we have no choice! So it was a three way Rock Paper Scissors job to see who would be with Fred. After the most tense game of R.P.S ever, in front of the whole boat, unfortunately for Tim he lost.

An hour before dinner, Butterfly announced that we should all have showers now, there is an hour of hot water, there wont be any in the morning. Every one was just laughing by this point. We didn't believe for one minute there would be enough hot water for everyone so tim tried, had hot water for about a mimute, ben tried and had no hot water couldn't even get in, and Lloyd just didn't bother, Nice!

There was more fish, rice and vet, but this time had some clams as well, which are actually quite nice! Had a couple of beers with the two Norweigen girls and played a bit of cards. Everyone was knackerd people started going to bed around half 7, 8ish. We lasted till about half 9 till we hit the sack! The rooms weren't too bad to be honest the beds were quite comfortable, the only thing was the windows didn't shut properly so a draft came through all night and it was freezing, we had to sleep fully clothed all night! Also because the windows didn't close proper it meant they were banging all night long and there was no way of stopping it! So the sleep wasn't the best but the early night was needed!

We were back up at 8 for breakfast, 'egg and bread' again. The boat then set off again back to the port where we had to get the bus back to Hanoi. Took about an hour or so on the boat, all of us still freezing. When we got back to the port we had to wait ages for the bus and there was a bit of grass so we got the ball out which we brought on the beach in Hong Kong and had a little kick about, took about 10 seconds before a load of locals joined in, they were loving it. Then for some reason out of nowhere Ben decides to ask one of them, 'Hows your touch?' and boots the ball as high as he could in the air, it looked like it was going straight in sea but no a massive palm tree was in the way so it got stuck in that way out of reach. Good one! After more and more locals getting involved throwing stones at the ball trying to get it back, someone hit it and down it came just as the bus pulled up.

We got on the bus and it took us just down the road for lunch in a resraurant, more of the same food. Some nice some not so nice! We then had to wait another hour for the bus to come to take us back to Hanoi. When it eventually came, for some reason it took even longer to get back that it did to get there, and us three were the last on so we got the rubbish seats. Four hours later with dead arses and back ache we got back to the hostel.

The boat trip definitely wasn't what we expected but for 30 odd quid we can't really complain too much, the caving, kayaking and the food we'd say were worth 30 quid. But we have definitely learnt that its true what they say, 'If it sounds too good to be true it probably is!' mind you, you could say that about beers for less than a pound, and that's true ;-).