Monday, 19th October

Arrived in Hanoi to sunshine, booked Halong Bay for tomorrow and stayed at Bamboo. Found the famous Fannys Ice-Cream place which was really good.

Tuesday, 20th October

We're going to Halong Bay at last. The bus took 4 hours to get there, we then had to wait another half an hour before we got our tickets by which time everyone from our bus was getting a little hot tempered. We all sat down for luch as soon as we were on, we sat with Jordan and Amanda who we instantly got on well with. They'd been travelling for 10 months and have two weeks left before they go back to Canada. Had a fantastic day, kyaking, sailing/cruising around the islands and visiting 'Halongs most beautiful caves'(Sung Sot) and jumping off the side of the boat. We stayed up late drinking with the Canadians, Jordan and Amanda, French guys Julian and Gaylord and a Korean called Mod. Julian was so funny with his facial expressions and Amandas Oliver Twist style English accent for entertainment along with the trusty i-pod we had a fantastic night, helped also by the bottles of vodka we'd smuggled on board.

Wednesday, 21st October

Bluury heads today, Tom was up early backflipping off the boat so I went for a swim. Everyone was getting on really well although all pretty quiet and the sun kept coming out while we were sitting on deck. We got back to shore and went for lunch in the 'restaurant' then headed back to Hanoi. We made it just in time to catch the bus to Hoi An but decided we needed a proper nights sleep so will go tomorrow night. Met up with Jordan and Amanda for supper near the lake, had a Russian style salad which was a mixture of all sorts of veggies but was really good.