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 downstairs still drunk from the night before, arguing about the pig that Rob had bought at the snake village. Rob got a beer and they went and sat outside while they continued arguing and having a cigarette. When the bus turned up at 8 to take us to Halong Bay they will still arguing about the pig and whether they would go to Halong bay or not. In the end they both got on the bus with me.

Great, I thought. These are the last two people that I want to be suck on a boat with all day and night. Let's hope there are some other English speaking people on the boat with me as I don’t want to have to be stuck with them.

After a 3 hour bus journey we arrived at the port at Halong Bay and while waiting for the tickets Rob and Sara were arguing again as the ATM wasn’t working. Oh no, they hadn’t got any better after a few hours sleep on the bus.

Boarding the boat I was paired up with Charlie, an American guy who was working in Vietnam teaching English who was also on his own, and we had to share a twin room together. Dropping off our bags in the room Charlie and I were sat down to a seafood lunch along with 3 English girls (Emily, Mia and Amy) who were just about to come to the end of a twelve month trip. At least we didn’t have to share with Rob and Sara, who didn’t show up for lunch.

The first stop on the cruise was to Hang Sung Sot, which was a series of 3 caves, each one bigger than the last. The first one holding around 20 people, then next 100 and the final one around 1000 people. Of course there is always a story about some of the rock formations and also how some of the shadows looked like animals, for example a nesting bird, lion and of course there had to be an elephant in there too!

After the cave we walked down to the shore, boarded a floating house and Charlie and I shared a Kayak and paddled around some of the rock formations for about an hour, exploring some smaller caves and generally having a problem going in a straight line!

We were then taken back to the boat by our smaller boat taxi where I noticed the name of the boat. It was called Christina Cruise!

We were then allowed to do some swimming around the boat and some people jumped off the boat from the top deck (not me, I just floated around) before we were served a seafood dinner and then sat on the top deck and watched the sunset.

While we were on the boat we were always being approached by smaller boats with women rowing them trying to sell us all alcohol and food. This was mainly due to the prices that the bigger boats (including ours) charged for the drinks onboard. We were even told that if we did buy drinks from these women then we would be charged $10 corkage charge! What a con.

Because the drinks were so expensive, Charlie and I decided to buy a bottle of spirits rather than buying really expensive beer. We decided on rum, which they didn’t have, then picked Bacardi which they also didn’t have so we settled on Absolute vodka. They gave us some other brand of local vodka trying to pass it off as Absolute, so we managed to get $10 off the price, but it still cost us $35 for a litre bottle.

We all sat up until about 2am, the 3 girls managed to sneak the two bottles of wine that they bought from the smaller boats, without being caught by the crew and charged $10 per bottle.