(24 October)

We got off the night train at 4am which was awesome craic, then had a 3 hour bus journey from Hanoi to Halong Bay. When we got there most of us were really tired, but we had a few hours before our boat trip, so I went for a dander along the beach. It was really pretty, not a lot going on in the town bit near our hotel though, just other hotels and a few restaurants and small shops. I went back to the hotel and tried to figure out what I was doing in Australia...in the end I got too stressed out about money and just left it, think I'll just decide when to leave Perth when I get there! We got a bus down to the pier and got on our boat for a trip around the bay. It was really nice, had a boat for just our group and our lunch was included which was pretty cool! The lunch was definitely interesting though...

We had prawns (fully decked out with heads etc...I did ok taking their heads off until I tried the third one and loads of yellow goo came out... Kind of put me off to say the least!), then some crabs (still in the shell but no legs etc thank god...they were actually really nice!), calamari (which was just too rubbery for my taste), and a big grilled fish with nothing taken off obviously - I tried a bit and it was nice enough but not worth figuring out how to eat it haha. We also got a bit of rice and a banana for dessert...it was pretty nice but definitely an experience haha!

After lunch we went through the bay a bit and it was actually gorgeous! So pretty! Couldn't get a photo to do it justice. After a while we stopped at a fishing village and had a look, it was very similar to Chau Doc. Some people stayed and sunbathed on the roof of the boat while we went kayaking! It was really good, the scenery is just amazing and we got to go through cavey things! Really glad I did it! Afterwards we went to see a cave which was pretty cool, loads of stalagmites and stalactites...thought it was really funny how many of them had stories behind them - it must be someone's job to go round these places and pick out which rocks look like animals etc! It was pretty how it was all lit up though, and there was a rock in the shape of a turtle which had money all over it because in their culture it brings good luck! After the cave we were back on the boat and sunbathed for a bit before heading back to the hotel.

We went out to the beach to watch the sunset which was nice, although some random Vietnamese man stole Anna's flip flop and wouldn't give it back for a while which was a bit annoying! Then we had a bit of a melt trying to find food, most of the restaurants were really overpriced. In the end we all split up and did different things, Laura and I decided to just go for a nice meal which was stupidly expensive by Vietnam standards but still not bad at home like! Was so glad we did because it was lovely to just sit in a nice restaurant and have proper homely food and we had free Internet on computers there as well, so were able to put photos on Facebook! Had an awesome pie and chips, and shared the nicest banana split yet! Although they didn't have banana, so we had mango instead...the ice cream was actually amazing though!