We arose very early to head off and see the sights of Halong Bay, a group of about 3000 islands just of the coast of Vietnam. The minibus journey took 4 hours and after several completely unnecessary stops along the way we arrived at the harbour at about 12. Stupidly, we realised we had booked the tour with the wrong company, as turning up at the harbour we saw groups of lots of Westerners all boarding their boats, laughing and generally having fun. We were with about 10 Vietnamese middle-age sightseers. Great. We boarded our boat and amused ourselves by playing cards, whilst the boat set off for the islands. Our first stop was a fish farm where you have to basically buy a fish or eat whatever they give you for lunch. Martha and Nyima bought a crab each whilst Laura thought she would risk what she was given. Lunch came and it wasn't too bad. There just wasn't much of it. Luckily Martha and Nyima had their crab but it still wasn't really enough. So we stole food from teh other tables! It did look like they weren't going to eat it anyway! Our next stop was a cave in one of the islands. We walked up some stairs and enetered the cave, along with about 700 other sightseers. You could barely see the actual cave for all of the other heads bobbing around. The only exciting thing that happened was the group of Vietnamese boys who found us fascinating and proceeded to pose for pictures with us at every opportunity. After exiting that cave we were told there was another one we could see but it was about a 3 mile trek up a hill first. So we skipped that one and headed back to the boat ready for the next part of the trip. Which actually turned out to be the minibus ready to head home. What a trip. Fair enough people don't generally do one day trips there as there is so much to see, but our tourguide didn't even explain the history of Halong Bay to us and why there were 3000 islands randomly scattered around the shore. And the only thing we actually saw was a cave - along with millions of other people. Not worth 18$ we can tell you. So, extremely disappointed we headed back to our hotel - very annoyed that our last day in Vietnam was wasted. But ever the optimists, we packed our stuff up ready to leave Asia after 4 and a half months. Onwards to Australia! We'll update from there! xx