Yesterday we did the Halong Bay one-day trip. We left our hotel at 8.30am and travelled 3.5 hours on a bus. Dom and i were the only ones on that bus doing the one-day tour, everyone else was doing the two day (we couldnt really afford it...)

We quickly got ushered onto a boat by our tour guide and instantly set sail! (they must have just been waiting for the two of us)

There were only 8 of us in a group, 4 asian tourists and a couple from New Zealand (and us of course)

The views were amazing but unfortunately it was a very foggy day. At first we thought this was a bad thing but it was actually really eerie and thought the fog added atmosphere

Its hard to explain in words how amazing the views were! We sailed through the bay where there were three thousand islands sticking out of the sea (the Vietnamese are dying to have it named as one of the 7 natural wonders of the world !)

We were asked if we'd like to take a smaller boat into the caves as our boat was too big.We all nodded (of course we wanted to do this) then our guide smiled and said 'good, well it costs 50,000dong per person' cheeky monkeys! Id like to say it was worth it (I suppose it was….) but 50,000 dong per person is over 2pounds each and we were on this boat for about 10minutes tops….

We also stopped at a fishing village. There are around 1600 people living on Ha Long Bay in four fishing villages. They live on floating houses and there was even a floating bank!! They earn a living from catching fish which we got to look at and even saw one get smacked over the head (i actually got a video of this by accident).

We then had a massive lunch including seafood, tofu, omelette, rice, cabbage, followed by fresh Pineapple … Delicious! And we got chatting to the couple from New Zealand who were telling us all of theirtravel tales (they were in their 50s and had seen a lot of the world…. Dom was getting very jealous)

We arrived at Hang Sung Sot cave and looked around. It was all tourist friendly with the dolphin and penguin bins inside, bright lights illuminating the inside and a big speaker phone with a woman laying out the rules…. Not very authentic but still amazing… Especially to imagine what this cave was like when it was discovered…. It was abosloutly huge inside but was jam packed with tourists!

We then headed home, unfortunately we spent more of the day travelling than sight seeing but it was definitely worth it…. It would be nice to visit again but on a clearer day… Suppose we'll just have to come back again some day..

Fly to Bangkok tomorrow morning at 9am - two hour flight ! Will be a breeze compared to the 12hour bus journeys weve been taking !!! xxx