So much for a lie in this morning, we were all woken up at 6am when they turned on the engines in order for us all to be up for a 7am breakfast. We ate breakfast and had to be out of our rooms for 8am so that they could start cleaning them for the next set of people who arrive on the boat at around 11am.We arrived on Cat Ba Island just before 11am where we left Charlie behind on the boat as he had only booked the 1 night trip. The remaining people caught a coac...

Yet another early start today, why do I keep booking things to do that start so early? This trip is 3 days long with one night on a boat and the second night in a hotel on Cat Ba Island. Hopefully I will get a chance of a sleep in or two.I was up at 7am packed a smaller bag to take with me to Halong Bay and then left my big rucksack in the hotel luggage store ready to be picked up in 3 days time. While having breakfast, Rob (about 40 years old) and Sara came d...

Today I had another early start as I had a long day ahead as we were going to drive out to the Perfume Pagoda and it was going to be my first time riding a bike, let alone riding one 120km!There were four of us heading out today, there was Quong and his, ahem, boyfriend Daniel (a German student living in Hanoi), and Summer and they came over to my hotel at 10am to pick me up, Quong and Daniel on one bike and Summer and myself on the other bike. First thing we h...

I was quite surprised to see that Quong had turned up at 9am at my hostel to pick me up and drive me round Hanoi showing me the sights as we had planned last night. He had brought along a spare helmet and I jumped on the back of his bike and we set off around the city on these crazy roads.Our first destination was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex where we stopped at the One Pillar Pagoda which was built at around 1054 and designed to represent a lotus blossom, ...

As this was my first full day in Hanoi, I decided to get up and make the most of the day. I got out my guide book and planned a kind of circular route around the city capturing as many of the major sights that I thought I could fit in to one day.After leaving the hotel and walking 10 minutes up the road, I had very quickly realised why everyone in Hanoi drives a motorbike. There was no one else walking around and I was starting to sweat already, at least on a b...