Our package trip to Halong Bay included :
3 days two nights, one on a boat with our own cabin, one in a hotel.
All meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner)
Stopping at the "Suprise Caves"
Stopping at Cat Ba Island to do some trekking in the National Park (for two hours...yay.)
Stopping on monkey Island to look around for monkeys or swim in the sea.

We really enjoyed this - not only is Halong Bay incredibly beautiful, but I didn't realise just how many Islands there are around it.
Over a thousand!! It knocked spots off anywhere else we'd seen on this trip when it came to stunning scenery.
At one point Luke and I were sat up on the top deck of our boat, just us and nobody else, soaking up the sun on a sunlounger and watching other boats go by. Awesome!

The crowd we had on our boat was cool , there was about 20 of us.
Myself and Luke, a group of about 6 Asian guys and girls, 4 older men from Singapore, a British couple, two spanish guys and some other European guys we didn't really get to talk to much.

The guys from Singapore we awesome! So funny and just wanted to play cards all the time... they were even playing it on the bus to the boat! They ended up being sat by us and were talking to us for a bit. Very funny guys - 4 friends who had left Singapore to come and see Vietnam for 5 days before heading back there.

Monkey Island was cool but we didn't see ANY monkeys at all...we'd been warned to keep a distance from them if we did as they can be aggressive and have been knonw to bite and steal things. :-S lol.
We had a swim there instead, was still exhausted after trekking up the side of a mountain the day before!!
As we all know, I'm not the biggest fan of trekking...it would have been amazing if i'd have even known we were doing it. After our three-day trek in a Thai jungle I swore never again unless I had my own personal air conditioning unit strapped to my back, a pair of sturdy boots and endless bottles of water.
Imagine my joy when we found ourselves at Cat Ba National Park, and what I thought would literally be a "walk in the park" was a two hour trek up and back down the side of a mountain. Which had a ...lovely old iron tower on the top you could climb up.

I know i've jumped off a waterfall, thrown myself out of a plane... but go up this thing? You must be joking! It looked like it was about to fall apart at any second!
Luke, of course, went up there.
Completely missed the sign saying "Do not climb" on the way up ;-)
He said once he was up there he was a bit wobbly at the knees from the height of it, and not to mention the missing slabs of wood allowing you to see right underneath you on the way up!
Glad I didn't do it now. I have no doubt if I REALLY wanted to, I would have. But I didn't want to. I was too hot, feeling the affects of those blasted Malaria tablets, and wanted nothing more than to down a nice cold bottle of water and sit in front of a fan for the rest of the day.
Me and extreme temperatures don't mix!
I love a hot beach.. when I have a cold cocktail in my hand, thank you very much.

Having said that, I'm glad we did it.
I did get a little sunburnt that day, but that was inevitable.

We went out that night with some friends we'd made on the boat...
A couple from Liverpool called Shauna and Phil. We only got a few drinks in and a game of pool before all the bars closed around 11. Boo. Damn this curfew thing ;-)

We got back to our hotel and crashed knowing we didn't have to get up early the next morning - we had to check out by 12 but had booked an overnight bus to Hue which left at 6pm. So we had a few hours to kill by seeing more of the city.