We spent 2days and 1 night in Halong Bay. We took an early bus from Hanoi and reached our boat on Halong Bay just in time for lunch. It was very busy and a lot of people appeared to be taking the boat trips. Everyone piled on our boat and we were given lunch. After a short ride on the boat we were taken to some caves. They really were fascinating. We have seen quite a few caves on this trip but these ones were huge. The rock formations were really unusual and the...

My first impressions of Hanoi were...well that it was freezing! It was immediately clear we would need to invest in some warm jumpers! Our backpackers wardrobe did not exactly fit the bill for this cold. All other travellers seemed to be in the same boat as they were wandering around trying to improvise with what they had. That first day I pretty much had to layer everything I had on. What I would have done for a nice pair of boots!....or anything that actually c...