The next day we set off for a 2 night boat trip around Ha Long Bay. Ha long bay is a beautiful bay with over 2000 islands that jut out steeply from the water. A very beautiful place, and of course full of tourists! Everyone buys package to go on a wooden boat called a 'junk' (and yes some of them really are), some are just day trips and others are overnight boats with bedrooms on board. We splashed out and got a fairly good one, glad we did but did mean we had lots of older ppl on board rather than backpackers though. We were lucky there was another honeymooning couple from Sydney and a British girl, we made friends with them all. Our bedroom on the boat was really nice and they decorated it with rose petals in the shape of hearts and a beautiful bouquet of flowers. The rooms were really nice and bathrooms big and clean with running hot water- better than some hotels!! That day we had an extravagant lunch on board (they fully catered to me not eating seafood and pork) and then went and looked at some caves. The caves were pretty good, lots of stallegtites and stallegmites , again lots of tourists and the guides spent their time pointing out shapes in the caves, they ranged from lions to Santa and many jokes and references to the honeymooning couples.... ! After that we got back on the boat and had a bit of time to relax and watch the beautiful scenery go by. We then pulled up at a water village where the locals' houses are built on rafts where they fish and keep all of the fish in water in nets around their houses. Don't know how they live there, the houses are so small with not many facilities. We got to do some kayaking which was fun and meant we got to see the village up close. We were all hoping to do some jumping off the top of the boat into the water after that (7 metre jump) however the state of the water was not nice at all, such a shame for a pretty place. There was no way we were jumping into that! That night we had another extravagant meal, about 7 courses! They also had carved flowers out if carrots and radishes, and had especially carved a flower out if a cabbage with 'honeymoon' on it for our table with the 2 honeymooning couples! We had a few beers that night and had a go at squid fishing- the only things we caught were plastic bags, a plastic glove, a thing and a dead rat. Was a fun game though seeing who could catch the funniest thing!
The next morning we got taken to cat ba island, the second biggest island in Vietnam. We went into the national park where we climbed a bit hill to a viewing tower. Was a fun but random experience, we had a local guide called monkey man who literally was like a monkey, he raced up the mountain, climbed vines and struck poses on the vines not dissimilar to pole dancing moves (the non-skanky ones) he was so talented!! He was really funny too and would race over and fan us, sing out loud and make monkey sounds. We got to the top (it was hard work!) and climbed the tower- in hind sight we probably should have left it, it was a rusty old tower about 4 floors high and when u eventually got to the top there was no platform, just a few old planks here and there u could easily fall through!! I didn't go on to the platform! Was a bit nerve racking- we were the first ones there but at the Top more tourists arrived and climbed up too, it was nerve racking when one guide said 'only 5 people at a time!, Old tower!' As we were coming down there were at least 20 others on there! Anyway made it back down safely. We then got taken to the main part of town, out hotel was nice, called the sea pearl. They upgraded us to a nice room on the 9th floor that overlooked the ocean, very nice! Honeymoon perks have been good so far! We the. Had lunch with our group (only the 6 of us in the whole restaurant) and went on a trip to monkey island. We went on a smaller boat, and travelled through some large water villages. There was even a supermarket in the village! Monkey island was nice, the water was nie and clean (a change!) so we had a swim and 'make lazy on the beach' as our tour guide called it! Chris climbed the mountain on the island for the views, I couldn't be bothered! A few monkeys around, we didn't go in for a close look. After the island the others went back to the big boat and we stayed on the island. Drank some $1 beers watching the sunset from our hotel room, very nice! Then had dinner, again we were the only ones in the restaurant! It's low season here at the moment. We then went to a bat around the corner called rose bar, where ladies got free beer :) so I made use of that! Was quite the western bar, lots if Aussies, they seem to be attracted to free beer! Also saw our new tour guide in the bar partying it up, we were wondering how he would be the next day!!
The next morning we had breakfast on our own in the restaurant again then got back on the big boat. Our tour guide was in good form luckily, but a bit of a crazy guy, called himself chicken and wore a crazy rainbow hat. Back on the boat our friends informed us we missed an exact repeat of dinner the night before, and not much else. Still no squid! We lazed around on the boat for a bit then all had a lesson on making spring rolls. There had been this funny 75 year old Korean man on our boat the whole time, he loved coming up to female westerners to have photos with them and loved showing his pictures to everyone. He was a bit random and crazy, he are his spring roll before it was cooked despite chicken man telling him not to! We then had to endure our hilarious tour guide sing a Vietnamese song on karaoke to all of us. Awkward to say the least!!! He really got into it ad if he was on idol or something ! We had a row boat cruise through some little caves, was nice, then headed back to shore for the 4 hour bus ride back to ha noi. Overall a very fun trip! That night we are street food, pretty good and very cheap. Chris found a new fave- bun cha, which is grilled pork pieces with noddles and greens. $3.50 for dinner for the 2 of us including a coke! Our hotel room was very average that night (they have us a regular room instead if the superior room we booked) but they were very apologetic the next day and also gave us a honeymoon present, some lovely ceramic vases. Going to be hard to carry them for 6 months though!!! We then got in a flight to Danang, only a 1 hr flight.