Up early this morning, ready to spend the day exploring some of the larger islands with the rest of our group. The first port of call took us to Cat Ba Island, which we toured round on mountain bikes, which had very questionable brakes!! We learned a little history of the small island, so called as the legend would have it as a result of the dragon who fought off warriors with his tail and in doing so, carved a large island into a series of much smaller ones, liked the place so much and decided to stay.The ride took us up a few ridiculously steep hills but the views from the top were absolutely breathtaking, and the atmosphere was so peaceful, we found it quite relaxing. After around an hour on the bikes, we stopped a little saddlesore at a local house where we were included in their Tet celebrations, which involved the eating of Sticky Rice cake, a staple treat in Vietnam. it was absolutely disgusting! to try and give you a picture of it: it was a congealed mass of rice covered in a substance very much like PVA glue and coloured with green food colouring. Being a cake we also expected it to be sweet, so were quite shocked when we took a mouthful to find that it was filled with chicken, sweetcorn and some other unidentifiable objects!! After that, the rice wine was passed around the group but being pretty early in the morning many of the group managed to escape. Accepting the first sip out of politeness was quite a mistake, as then the rest of the locals decided to pass me theirs to drink also!! It certainly made the rest of the ride go pretty smoothly!

then it was back nto the bikes and we headed off to our next stop, which were a set of caves, discovered by a local fisherman sheltering from a storm in 1998 and has since been made into a UNESCO World Heritage Site. on entering the tunnels, it was clear to see why as the stalactites and stalacmites in there were absolutely beautiful and lit up to remarkable effect with multi-coloured lights. It was then back to the boat for lunch (of yet more fried fish) and some local children in small boats began to beg at the side of the boat, which was really quite sad to see.

Following this, we headed off for a short trek into the countryside with a local guide, upto another cave. Once inside 2 members of our group who spoke Vietnamese (our tour guide spoke very little english), explained to us that our guide had used these caves to shelter from the bombs in the Vietnam war, which must have been terrifying as they were completely black dark!

the next activity of the day was kayaking. It was completely hilarious as we were fully clothed and got absolutely soaked. Me and Nat decided to head a little off the beaten track and ended up shipwrecked at the front of someone's house on the water. After a difficult 5 minutes trying to get free as the owner of the house got increasingly more amused, we decided a change of tack was needed so we decided to do a lap of one of the smaller islands instead, which was pretty tiring, especially when we realised that it extended out far further than we had anticipated around the back!!

With our muscles tiring and the cold setting in, we headed back to the boat. From here we sailed on for around another 15 minutes to yet another island,which due to its steep incline was the perfect viewpoint from which to view many of the other island, after climbing the 122 steps to the top that is!!

From then we headed off to Monkey Island, but due to the shallow waters we boarded a much smaller boat made from weeds and made our way across to the deserted island. As we pulled up on the shore, 2 monkeys and 1 baby monkey came running out of the trees to meet us on the sand.The stayed watching us for a while,before ducking back into teh cover of the deserted house which they called home. Our guide then decided it would be a nice idea to climb a really REALLY steep rockface, minus ropes and helmets. After a 15 minute climb we reached the top of the uneven rockface to absolutely amazing views out over the bay!

After feeding a couple of the monkeys some fruit, and nearly getting attacked by the larger male monkey in the process, we set sail once again back to the dockside, where we would spend the evening.

Arriving at the hotel we were pleased to find that it was complete with central heatings and hot showers, aswell as satellite tv!After a dinner prepared especially for the group, we sat down with the rest of our tour group and spent a leisurely dinner swapping stories from home, before retiring to the comfort of our rooms to watch King Kong....again!