On Saturday morning we got back to Hanoi at 4.30am, were met at the train by our hotel staff and taken back to Hanoi Old Centre for a few hour's rest, breakfast and an 8.30 pickup to start our few days on Halong Bay. It was a three hour bus ride to the marina which is all new and on a small island just over a bridge from Halong City. You can already see that a number of luxury hotels are being built there. We took a small tender out to our boat which has a lovely deck on top and two levels of cabins to accommodate about 30 people. We were lucky enough to be put into the best cabin at the front of the boat. It has a king size bed, a single and an ensuite bathroom, all with dark timber floors.

We started cruising though the magnificent scenery of Halong Bay, eating lunch and chatting to other passengers until we moored. We all left the boat to kayak a small distance through a cave and into a small secluded area. We saw monkeys coming down to the water and enjoyed the peacefulness. We kayaked back to the boat, I did manage to steer us under a small rock formation and get us stuck! Luckily some others could push down on the front of the kayak and get us out. (No one told me this was going to be an adventure holiday with trekking in the mountains and kayaking!) After returning to the boat we got into the tender again and went to a small beach area for a swim. The water was colder than we expected but welcome after the hot weather we've been experiencing. After dinner we sat on the upper deck and enjoyed the cool breeze and the lights from other ships around us.

On Sunday we had a lovely breakfast and were in a small boat by 8.30am and travelled for 40 minutes to a small area where we moored and got into canoes to kayak through a number of small caves. The scenery again was lovely and the caves were good. After one and a half hours (!) of kayaking we went back to the small boat and did some swimming from the boat before lunch. Lunch was lovely with lots of seafood and there always seems to be plenty of food served up. After lunch we did more swimming from the boat before travelling to Vinapearl Pearl Farm to see them seeding oysters and to look at the pearls from there. It was a 20 minute trip back to the main boat from there.

This morning we went to a local cave which was a short boat trip away and walked through this large cave admiring the sights. Back on the boat we had a class to learn how to make fresh spring rolls or rice paper rolls as we call them. The rice paper sheets were much thinner than those we get at home.

We headed back for Halong City after an early lunch and boarded the bus for the 3 hour trip back to Hanoi and our base at the Hanoi Old Centre Hotel.