So it is finally time for me to add something to our travel blog.. my excuse is that Brian is better than me at it ... here goes....

We travelled to Cat Ba Island, one of the largest islands on Halong Bay, from here we hoped to organise a tour around the bay. The journey should have taken about 3hours by road and a further 35km from the port to the island by boat..... somehow we went slightly wrong with the boat part and ended up on a touring boat which docked after 4.5 hours at sea!

Cat Ba is a sleepy fishing town and although the tout on the boat claimed it was high season and we would have problems getting accomodation ( and therefore should book a room through him - which we didn't) the town was pretty deserted. We did however manage to find a good bar that played great music on request and partied to the early hours... not so good the next morning when we were due to sail at 7.30am!

We booked a two day boat trip on a sail boat during which we were to snorkle, visit caves and beaches and Kayak. I was quite worried about staying over on the sail boats as there were horror stories about bad food and rats on some of the boats! When we borded our ship I was releaved to find it was clean and surprisingly comfortable with a working toliet and shower. We were joined by another couple from England, a girl from Poland and three crew to look after us.... they did not have a word of English so it was sign language all the way. The scenery was stunning, lots (i think over 3000... Brian informs me its 3602!) of lime stone cliffs jutting out of tourquise calm water. None of the islands are inhabited but there are lots of floating villages complete with schools, the down side of the floating population is that some of the surrounding water isnt as clean.

Tragically it rained from the moment we stepped foot on the boat so after several hours we decided that our only option was to drink! We stocked up on local wine and beer, the crew supplied us with their home brew rice wine ( it came in an old 1l water bottle) and it was vile... think potchine. The 'capitano' of the ship decided we were playing his game of 'spin the bottle karaokee'.. umm hours of entertainment. They taught use some Vietnamese and we taught them some drinking games!

Thats all for now folks

kimxx