Date: 27th June 2011

Place: Halong Bay

Weather: Sunny

It was a very early start after a very late finish today. I hadn't slept very well either because I was paranoid my alarm wasn't going to wake me up. It took me a while to get Carm up as well, she wasn't having it at all! We had to pack really fast and went down to grab a quick breakfast but it turned out we had to wait for ages to get on the bus anyway.

It was a four hour bus journey to Halong Bay from Hanoi and my earphones had decided to go funny on me so they were being really quiet and I could hardly hear my music for the whole journey. After a bus and then a small boat we arrived on our main boat, the Jolly Rodger.

Well it was much posher than I expected! It had three floors; one rooms, one restaurant/bar and one a roof deck. We all head straight up to the deck where Dan, the group leader, explained the plans for the trip. After chilling for a little while in the sun we were called down for lunch which was a great spread! We met a few girls who had been studying in Sydney for the past year and were travelling on the way back. They loved it and hearing them talk about it makes me so tempted to go!

Once lunch was finished we were allocated rooms. Whilst I was sat in my room I saw some girls fall past the window. Everyone had started jumping from the top deck into the sea. We went up and it is so high when you are looking down from there. Someone also mentioned that they saw a jelly fish in there which made me feel great about jumping in! It took a while to work up the courage, Carm struggled a lot so I jumped in with another girl. It felt like longer than it looked.

It was quite nice sea. Nice and warm but I was so paranoid about jelly fish, I could have sworn one touched my foot but I think it was purely paranoia, but still from then on I kept my feet up! I didn't stay in long but attempted to get Carm to jump down she still couldn't bring herself to do it.

Once everyone was out of the water we were told to pair up with the opposite sex and then we were going kayaking. Well our boat was overrun with girls so I ended up going with one of the girls we met at lunch. We were actually awesome at Kayaking and overtook almost everyone! We were second to the cave, beaten by a couple of lads purely because we had decided to have a little float for a while.

The caves were pitch black so hard to walk in. They warned us that if we are claustrophobic in the slightest then not to worry about the small part we are about to go through because it is only short. I was a bit worried but determined to do it and it turned out to not be as bad as I thought. Whilst there we learnt about the history of Halong Bay and how the Vietnamese had hidden in the cave when the Americans were looking for them but they never managed to find them.

There was a lagoon part way through that was next to a cave called the fairy cave. The fairy cave was the main hiding place for the Vietnamese and it was quite big inside. I couldn't imagine living in there though still, it had no light at all and was quite creepy.

It was quite late when we started heading back. The girl I was paired with and I really couldn't be bothered with kayaking back so we just took it really slow. The journey back turned out to be pretty eventful though. I saw a hugggeeeee jelly fish; I actually hit it with my paddle and it made me jump. Then we saw a guy attempting to get back into his kayak after falling out because he had sat on the bit at the back rather than inside it. We later saw the same guy in the water again but this time they had both fallen in and the kayak was sinking!

We went over to see if we could help them because if they lost the Kayak it would cost them $200. They held onto our kayak and another one on the other side of them whilst holding their kayak up with their legs. It looked so heavy bless them so thankfully it didn't take long for a Vietnamese guy to come to help them. I couldn't believe it when they actually managed to get the kayak out; it was completely underwater when I saw it!

After seeing them get the Kayak floating again we started heading back in the direction we were meant to be going. By this time it was almost dark and there were a few ways we could go but we didn't know which way we were meant to; Halong Bay all looks the same. We also had no idea which was our boat. It was lucky that eventually one of the guys who had helped the sinking kayak caught up with us and lead the way back. When we got back to the boat nobody seemed to be bothered that we had been gone ages, they were all just busy getting ready for dinner!

After dinner a few of us sat up on the top deck for a little while until it started to rain. Everyone else was downstairs starting to play drinking games but instead Carm and I just went to bed. We were so tired that we fell straight to sleep and slept through the sounds of drunken people who were literally on the floor right above us!