Off to Halong Bay today so we left our rucksacks at the hotel and just took our small bags with the stuff we needed for overnight. We got picked up in a minibus/transit van, which wasn't very comfortable with about 12 people squeezed in! I hoped we were being taken to a bigger bus but unfortunately that wasn't the case. Our guide, Thanh, who looked about 12, introduced himself and explained it would take us about 3 hours to get to Halong City where we would board the boat. He told us about what we'd be doing today and tomorrow including exploring a cave, kayaking, swimming and relaxing on the boat - sounds good to us!

After a break half-way there, we eventually arrived at the harbour in Halong City. We followed Thanh around like lost sheep as he took us from place to place and told us to wait for him, and then got on a small boat which took us to the big boat, called Mien Hai. There were 19 people altogether on our boat, which can hold 24, so it wasn't quite full and was a nice group size. Our first impressions were very good as we were shown to the dining room and sat down at one of the tables. We were joined at our table by Nicky from Newcastle (yes, our Newcastle!), Kevin from Somerset, Darren from South Africa and Fran from New Zealand. When we were all sat down we were given our room keys so we could put our stuff away and then come back for lunch. We were very impressed with our en-suite cabin - nicer than some of the hotels we've sayed in! Lunch was a feast of seafood, rice and vegetables, family-style in the middle of the table, and we chatted to the others. Nicky works for a voluntary organisation in Borneo, and the other 3 have just finished a year teaching English in Korea, so we had lots to talk to them about.

After lunch, we arrived at our first stop of the afternoon - Hang Sung Sot, or the 'surprising cave'. We were taken to the island on the little boat, and climbed the steps to enter the cave. Halong Bay's limstone islands have lots of caves of all shapes and sizes,and this is one of the biggest and most popular. It has 3 huge, beautiful chambers, with an unusual pattern on the ceiling caused by the waves, rather tahn stalegtites. Our guide took us through the caves and pointed out formations that were supposed to look like animals e.g. tortoise, dog, chicken, elephant etc. Some I coudl sort of make out, but others not so much! The whole thing was huge and we would have liked more time to look around properly but our guide kept marching us on. We kept being left behind everytime we stopped to take pictures!

Back outside, we got back on the little boat which took us to one of the floating villages where we would get into kayaks. There are 4 floating villages in Halong Bay and some of the women have small boats which they fill with all kinds of food, drinks and other random things to sell to tourists on the big boats. They row up to the big boats shouting for the tourists to 'buy something!'. They sell beer cheaper than on the boats but we'd been warned that we can't take our own alcohol on the boat or we'll get charged a surcharge of 30% of the menu price...so it's not worth it! Anyway, back to the kayaks...we got given lifejackets and paddles and managed to get into our 2-man kayak without capsizing! We had a nice little paddle around the small islands and floating villages, although did almost crash into a cliff wall at one point!

Next, the little boat took us to Titiop Island which has a small beach for half an hours swimming. We were all glad to cool off in the water...until we spotted a huge jellyfish and a woman who looked like she'd been stung - ouch! Back on the big boat we had showers and got changed, then met the others on the roof terrace to take some sunset photos. We sat with the same peope for dinner which was again delicious - lots of fresh seafood, Vietnamese style. The options for 'activities' that night were karaoke or fishing...noone was that keen on either so everyone just spent the night chatting and drinking the expensive bar drinks - $2 for a small can of beer! We haven't paid that much for a beer for a long time!

All in all, a brilliant day spent in a beautiful setting, chatting to friendly people - perfect!