An 8am departure from Handspan offices in Hanoi followed b a 4 hour drive to Halong Bay. The only stop being an enormous shop with clean toilets expensive Vietnamese gifts and little ladies to follow you around with a basket in the hopes you'll part with some cash. Relatively chaotic scenes along the way, women working the rice fields, unfinished roads, half assed road repairs huge factories, and all manner of things being transported by motorbike. Plenty of boats leaving the city for Halong bay but quite quickly we became one of only a few and finished the day with some gorgeous kayaking and a swim on a deserted beach. Not too much rubbish in the beautifully warm water. Fantastic dinner followed by a spot of squid fishing then a hilarious viewing of top gear in Vietnam. Very appropriate. Enormous electrical storm and heavy rain this morning during our early tai chi session. However this cleared and we went off for a great day kayaking to yet another secluded beach for swimming and sunbathing, then lunch on our smaller boat. Arthur and Will had a bit of excitement when a mini sword fish jumped into their boat and started flapping around in the puddle on the bottom. Charlie fortunately saved the day fishing it out! Motored off to a huge cave in one of the karst before returning to the main boat for showers and an afternoon of relaxing. I thought the pollution would be worse and had expected there to be hoardes of people wherever we went. However in the most part there has only been one or two other boats around so has felt extremely peaceful. Wonderful company in the Peach family from Leeds. Arthur has loved having Will, Charlie and Tom.