We arrived at the strangest sleeping bus yet... It had seats above, in pairs, to lie on and what looked like storage space underneath the seats. It turned out the dark window-less area underneath the seats were also beds and not only that but they were for me and Lee.... We were one of the last to get on the bus so most of the seats had been taken. When Lee realized the floor was a bed he was made up with the space and dove down on the ground... I reluctantly fol...

We were leaving at 5pm so we had loads of time to wonder the now open shops, visit the post office and explore anything we might have missed. That didnt really last long so we headed back to the hostel, got a hot chocolate and went to see what films were on - btw the weather was still really cold! Plus we hardly had any clothes because the laundry had been closed. The film playing was Super Bad!!! I love this film 'people don't forget'. The wifi wasn't the best ...

When we woke the Scot had a thick lip..... Stupid boy! We were up at 7 but the boat didn't get back until 12 so we sat around and waited.... When we got back we checked in (again) with the hostel and met some lovely girls in our room from New Zealand. We chilled out, got showered and went for a wonder. The shops were still shut so we came back to meet the girls for tea. After we'd eat the girls went a water puppet show and we went back to the hostel.

We woke, packed up, put our big bags in the hostel storage and went down for breakfast. This consisted of a free baguette with bananas (mmm banana butties) and a mug of coffee. We had to meet in the downstairs area for the bus to take us to Halong Bay. We got there at 12pm (it's 4 hours from Hanoi including the stupid 20min tourist stop looking at 'souvenirs' at a hiked up price). The minibus was split into two and the two groups stepped aboard separate boats. O...

We arrived in Hanoi after a rather pleasant bus journey. Because there was a toilet on board we made very few stops so instead of arriving between 8-10 we arrived at 5:30am. It was still pitch black. Normally there is a barrage of tuk tuk drivers waiting to throw random figures at you to take you to your guesthouse..... There were taxis. So few of them that we had no-one to take us? Some motorbike taxis pulled up but we're a bit scared to get on them with our bag...