This morning I had a lay in trying to catch up on some of the lost sleep during the 3 days in Halong Bay, so I didn't leave the hotel until after 2pm, so I went for a walk around the city to some of the places in the Lonely Planet that I hadn’t seen yet.The first place I headed that was called The Memorial House, which was a restored traditional Chinese-style house that shows you how local merchants used to live in the Old Quarter. The house was quite ...

Today we were up as told at 7.30am for breakfast except for Rob and Sara who had decided to stay on Cat Ba Island for a few extra days to see some more of the island as we hadn't really had the time to explore it properly. They were going to catch the boat back another day and they tour guides had already confirmed that this was OK. I wonder who was looking after their pig at the hostel or whether there had been bacon for breakfast for a few days while I ha...

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...