The rumours were true. There's no smoke without fire, right? It was cold and wet in Hanoi. Something that we're of course used to from home, but not something that we were particularly expecting in late March in Vietnam. The word on the vine is that the weather all over South East Asia has been going crazy since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami though, so maybe that has something to do with it - Northern Vietnam should be experiencing a lovely Spring around now.

Based on countless recommendations from friends and fellow backpackers, we booked ahead to stay at the new Hanoi Backpackers hostel, home to fantastically executed Western comfort food, comfortable and modern dorm rooms and a massive flat screen with hundreds of films on hard drive available for your enjoyment - the perfect recipe in the face of typically English winter weather.

Braving the cold, we wrapped up in our brand new tailored coats and took a walk through the city to the Women's Museum. The subjects inside ranged from describing pregnancy and birthing traditions throughout the tribes of Vietnam, wedding rituals, female resistance fighters through the Vietnam war, fashions of Vietnamese women and a very moving exhibition dedicated to single mothers in Vietnam and the charity that is working to support them in a society in which being a single mother is considered taboo.

The weekend saw the arrival of one of the most anticipated moments of my trip - the Rock Long, Rock Hard Hanoi Backpackers Halong Bay trip. A group of 36 backpackers approach the famous Halong Bay with approximately nine layers of clothing each (bar Richard, who brings two tees, a shirt and a pair of jeans), an appetite for Ring of Fire and a readiness to lose all dignity. In short - an amazing few days. The outrageous tour guides encourage the debauchery through huge games of Ring of Fire, where pulling a seven means you are resigned to imitating Stephen Hawking and the victim to your fellow Ring of Fire players, because of course, Stephen Hawking cannot move. Cue silly and obscene drawings in permanent marker over your face and body. I pulled a seven twice. Mind you, rather that that an eight (stand on the table and stop the whole game to make a confession).

I managed to have a bit of a stand off over some music switching with a bunch very 18 year old 18 year olds...if you get me. Most of the 18 year old gap yearers have been wonderful, and I've become good friends with a lot of them. Some of them are just so 18 in the worst possible way - obnoxious and selfish. It's alright, there were about seven of them travelling together from school and they all had a big row and went to bed early. Score. The rest of us spent the early hours of the morning reliving the greatness of Shaggy's 'It wasn't me' and dancing like lunatics to the Mumford album on repeat three times until 3.30am.

The next day the majority of the boat were still drunk from the antics of the night before, and most of the team were returning back to Hanoi, having opted for the one night trip. Twelve of us remained for the second night on an island exclusively leased out to Hanoi Backpackers. Amongst the twelve of us were a group of just-out-of-school lads we dubbed the Inbetweeners. They'd been heavily on the lash for five nights prior to the Halong Bay trip and were amongst the last ones standing after Ring of Fire. The epitome of them as a group came when one of them, David, needed to wash his stuff after some uncontrolled vomiting courtesy of Ring of Fire. Forgetting that we had access to a hot shower on Castaway island, he proceeded to wash his clothes and travel towel in the bay. I say 'wash', I mean 'drop into water and kick it around a bit', being too hungover to do anything but this. Honestly, if the Inbetweeners get home alive it will be a near miracle. Top lads.

Entertaining us through our lunch, Stevie C claims he could totally live on a castaway island like Tom Hanks and survive, which led to much ribbing and a lot of offers to take him to a deserted beach so he could take up the challenge. He seems less keen when we say that taking the cheese and ham sandwiches he's just made up for a snack for later would be considered cheating.

It still being freezing and rainy on the island, the fact that we're sleeping in huts with no walls is a slight concern to us. Luckily, because there were so few of us crazy enough to camp out in such weather, we bagged three massive duvets each and I had the best night's sleep I'd had in about a month and a half. It's funny how you never notice how badly you've been sleeping until you sleep well.

The trip has been so much fun that I am already dying to do it again in the summer so I can really take advantage of the place and more importantly, see the thousands of islands dotted throughout Halong Bay without them being shrouded in mist. Despite the bad weather, the Bay is still striking and I can imagine it is nothing short of spectacular in the sun.

To ease our pain on our return, we satisfy a collective craving to watch Forrest Gump, and proceed to watch four movies in a row before flying back to Bangkok the next day. The perfect goodbye to Vietnam and sum up our later weeks there: "We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rained at night."