Our journey from Hanoi to Halong Bay began when we were picked up at our hotel by the tour company we had booked with at 8.15am. The bus journey to Halong Bay was about four hours with a half hour stop halfway there and was fairly comfortable although the leg room on the bus was definitely for Asian people rather than taller westerners and I've got some of the shortest legs in the world! After getting to Halong Bay, we had to board a small boat to get out to our larger ship which we would be spending the two days and one night aboard. Our boat was called the Golden Lotus and our first impressions were okay. In all of the photos which we had seen, the boat was a dark brown colour but for some reason the owners had decided to paint it white which just made it look like all the other boats and the dirt showed up far more. We jumped aboard and checked into our room which was a decent size considering we were on a boat and had loads of windows to admire the views. We were then ushered into the dining room where we tucked into a huge lunch. The food just kept coming and coming and even though there were five of us on the table there was no way we could eat the all of the food. By this point, the boat had set sail an we were getting out into Halong Bay. One noticeable thing was the amount of boats and tourists doing the same trip. There were hundreds of similar sized boats and thousands of tourists doing the tour. We sat on the top deck for a while just admiring the views and taking plenty of photos before we went on our first visit to Sung Sot Cave. We had to queue to get in with the thousands of other tourists but the cave was really impressive and was absolutely huge. We spent about an hour looking around before we jumped back on the smaller boat and we had the option to either lie on the beach or climb up a hill to take views over the bay. I will let you make your mind up as to which option Beth took but I climbed up to the top of the hill which did offer great views of the many islands. After clambering back down, I found Beth who had decided not to go into the water as it was far too cold. I looked like I had been in the water due to the sweatiness of climbing up and down the hill and was glad when we could get back on the small boat to get back to the big boat.
After showers and changing, it was happy hour at the bar; buy 2 get 1 free. On that basis, Beth decided she would try another beer. As per her previous dalliances, she didn't like it and it took her an hour and a half to drink a quarter of a small bottle!! We then made some spring rolls with everyone else on the boat which was good fun before we had another huge tea of lots of seafood, meat, rice and fries before we had a couple more drinks on the top deck of the boat with three Australians we had met on the boat. Immediately after tea, everyone had the chance to squid fish off the side of the boat. We thought we would give it a bash but didn't catch anything. We did see a large jellyfish though and a Chinese woman on our boat did catch a squid before putting it back. We were surrounded by other boats nearby and could here strains of karaoke coming from them in the middle of the bay which was slightly surreal but they do love karaoke over here!!
It was an early start on Saturday as we were up at 6.30am for breakfast at 7am. Again breakfast was really good and we filled ourselves up before we left at 7.30am to go kayaking. I slightly underestimated how wet I would get kayaking and didn't wear swimming shorts so I had a short temper with Beth when our strokes weren't in sink. Cutting my foot in the cave we stopped at didn't help but we had a good time as we kayaked around a floating village and spent about an hour on the water. Whilst we were in the cave, there was a large red starfish in the side of the Australians kayak which our guide took off and we managed to get a picture of it. The two Vietnamese couple in our group then put the starfish in a plastic bag and our guide told us that it would be made into wine!! Not sure what that's all about but I bet that Vietnamese wine isn't as good as Argentinian or Chilean!!
It was then back to the big boat for a shower before we spent the rest of our time relaxing on the top deck enjoying the view which was great. Too be honest, we would have liked a bit more time of being able to just sit and admire the view rather than lots of activities but we still had a great time. The guide, Tony, then played gangnam style over and over again on the speaker system to which a little 3 year old from Hong Kong was doing the dance to. It was really funny and the poor kid was knackered as it seemed that he couldn't hear the song without dancing!!
We were transferred back to land at about 11.30am an straight to a restaurant or another huge lunch before the 4 hour journey back to Hanoi. After our previous hotel shenanigans, we moved to our new hotel an they had our room still. You wouldn't believe how happy we were. After getting settled, we were going to go back to the Indian restaurant we ate at on Wednesday but the weather had turned and it was raining so we ended up going to KFC before going back to our room at about 7.30pm and catching up on the Internet and watching some sport whilst having a few beers.
We are currently sitting in a nice cafe as we have just checked out of our hotel. Tonight, we leave for Hue on the train. It leaves at 7.35pm and arrives in Hue at 9.10am tomorrow which is about a 14 hour journey. We are hoping that the train will be more comfortable than recent bus journeys and are just relaxing until we need to leave for the station.