We arrived in Hanoi train station about 4.20am and got on a bus for 3 hours to Halong Bay. The bus was freezing and the there were so many bumps in the road it made it impossible to sleep, so when I got to the hotel I had to have a little nap to prepare me for the day.

We all met up and headed to the harbor to get on our boat which would take us around Halong Bay for the day. The boat was lovely and it had been rented privately for our group so we had so much space. Lunch was included and we had soup, spring rolls, shrimp, squid, noodles, rice, fish and crab cakes followed by fruit. It had all been freshly made on the boat and was lovely!!

We also moored up and after climbing a lot of steps we went inside a really large cave, which was amazing, although the Vietnamese had lit up different sections of the cave with garish lighting. It was also so nice and cool in the cave it gave us all chance to cool down.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the top deck of the boat enjoying the scenery and some sunshine. Halong Bay was stunning and I ended up taking far too many photos, but not everyday you get scenery like this.

After arriving back on land we headed to the man made beach (there will still bags of sand lying at random points along the beach) for a swim. Again the locals stopped and stared at us and while we were sat playing cards one local stood next to us and just started taking photos of us, I really didnt think I was that interesting!!

In the evening Halong Bay was for very quiet, so we had dinner at a local restaurant before heading back to the hotel and playing cards.