Dear diary,

It's been a while since I last wrote & so much has gone!!

Went to Halong Bay for 3 day/2 night trip along with 5 others from the Hostel in Hanoi. Bit of a pain to get to the boat (3.5 hours by bus) at Halong City, but when we did arrive & eventually got on our boat, we were all really quite impressed (considering that there were over 300 other boats dotted about the harbour!!).

There were about 30 people on boat & most were travelling in groups, so I got paired up with a bloke from Canada (Nick). We had lunch on the boat just outside the harbour & then Nick joined the rest of us on the top deck on the sun loungers for the 3 hour sail into the main bay, passing some magnificant scenery.

We stopped off to see a cave and do a bit of kayaking, which was a right laugh & on way back to boat, got some great pictures of the sun setting!

Arrived back at the boat about 5pm ish, by which time the sun had set & it was now dark - so the perfect time to go for a swim!! Am proud to report that I was the first to dive into the black abyss!!!

Had dinner on the boat at about 7pm, which again was really good. The best part of the evening & in fact the whole trip was when Nick & I sat with the captain & the crew & shared their dinner, wine & the lethal rice wine (Captain's birthday). Communication was a bit hard but managed to pick up a few words (hello, goodbye, thank you etc). After being there for about 40 minutes & 2 glassess of rice wine later (alcohol content in the region of 50-60%), we headed back to the top deck & joined the others for a few drinks a game of cards. Last things I really remember was going to but ANOTHER bottle of vodka & crashing out on the lounger at about 3am!!

Surprisingly enough, when I woke at 7am I wasn't feeling half as rough as I should have been, so decided that an early morning swim would be ok.

When having to 'check out' of the boat & settle our bar bill, we receieved a round of applause as the average bill was about 200,000 dong but between 3 of us we had 2,300,000!!!

Spent 2nd day around Cat Ba island, which was a bit dull really. We travelled on a small fishing boat, which the fisherman let me sail (only nearlly sailed into the river banks the once!!), to see another cave..!!!!

3rd day was a trek & half to get back to the hostel in Hanoi. Left Cat Ba at 9.30am & should have been back by 4pm. This turned into 6pm as our coach was involved in an accident with another coach & a huge truck. No one was hurt, but we had to sit on coach for 2 hours while it was sorted out with the drivers & the police. It did however provide much amusement to the locals!!!

Once back in Hanoi, I packed my ruck sack & headed off to the train station for the 11pm train to Hue (which was only due to take 12 hours!!)........