My first tour in Asia was halong bay. It was a 4 hour bus journey up further north in Vietnam to a gateway city called halong which is what cairns is to the Great Barrier Reef. Halong bay has been voted as one of the new natural 7 wonders of the world and I heard from a lot of people it was definitely worth going.

After the bus journey we were put into our groups, there was different groups depending on which company you booked through and also how long you were staying for. I opted for the two day trip so I would stay over night on the boat.

There was only 7 of us staying in the boat, me and an American guy called mark, then two Girls from London called Hayley and shiv, an Australian couple and a guy from Hong Kong named phil.

It was two people to a room so me and mark shared and the rooms were decent with nice beds and air con, a lot more higher quality compared to the boat I had in the whitsundays but to be fair this was more of a cruise anyway. Straight after we checked into our rooms dinner was served and there was a hell of a lot of food. Plate after plate they would bring out more food, mainly seafood too but I went in for the chicken and load of rice they had which earned me the nickname "the colonel" on account of the guy from KFC, although peer pressure made me eat dragon fruit which wasn't actually too bad.

After food we enjoyed the cruise for a little while and then ended up in the area for the cave walk. We got off the boat and followed our guide who as we were walking through the cave explained that in halong bay there are just under 2000 of these islands, all made from limestone. Ancient tribes dated back to thousands of years ago lived in the rocks all the way up until the 1900s. He also explained the history and story behind the islands which was pretty interesting.

Coming out the caves and walking to our boat there was a wild monkey walking in front of us, it dissapeared and as I ended up walking slightly faster than the group as we broke up a bit, only between a 3 minute walk, but the monkey reappeared from nowhere apparently and jumped down in from of mark and started walking the same path as us. I stopped to take a picture as it walked past me not even looking at me and took a seat on the walkway at one side, I tried to walk past it from behind but it obviously thought i was in its territory so it got up and jumped twice trying to claw me! Then nicked off, good thing it didn't scratch me as god knows what kind of infection I would have got.

We returned to the smaller transport boat and it took us to a little floating village where we went to kayak for half an hour. It was pretty epic just floating and moving around the islands getting right up close to them and just taking in the views, so beautiful and peaceful. Another thing that surprised me was that people still lived in this world heritage site trying to make a living, 99% was these floating fishing villages where people would live all their life catching squid and what ever else and the occasional woman rowing a boat trying to sell the people on tour boats western food like Pringles and stuff which looked pretty funny as they pulled up to your boat.

Next stop was halong beach, I think anyways or at least halong bay centre as there was all the other tour boats pulled up where people were sunbathing, swimming or playing football on this little beach, our guide told us if you get to the top of the steps you get a great view at the top of the hill and it definitely was brilliant. The top of the hill you had a postcard view of halong bay in its entirety, overlooking a whole bunch of island surrounding the island we were on.

We returned to the boat to have tea, and there was a load of seafood out again but the first dish was a make your own sort of fajita but Vietnamese style were it was like rice paper, you put fish sauce which has all sorts in like chilli vinegar and stuff in it, mix that with noodles and beef strips and wrap it up into a fajita type food, it was actually quite nice but unusual. I got daring and tried crab cake which on my first bite tasted nice but got worse and worse and I nearly threw up in my mouth so I stopped it there and stuck with the chips on offer. Mango was the dessert at the end and I have to say its well tasty, unfortunately I heard its better over here than back home which is a shame.

Now it was night and time to relax, they put on a little "sunset party" as a little joke which was just a glass of red wine and fruit as we sat on the top deck watching the sun go down which was pretty cool. Seemed all the days activities, the sun and sea air took it out of everyone so we all had a quiet night.

The following morning we just cruised around the islands and were shown a couple more fishing villages and told about their way of life where apparently the fisherman only get one month a year to find a girl, apparently the firt night they have a party and everyone sings, maybe in some sort of karaoke way then they must pick one another that they fancy, then have a few weeks to get to know each other then eventually marry. And apparently when they die they are buried somewhere for 3 years, then after that time put on a boat and put in a final resting place. We also were shown the James Bond cave where they filmed a spot for tomorrow never dies but you couldn't really see anything.

We had dinner just before we left the boat and I had a go at a fish cake and I've now come to the conclusion sea food just isn't for me, but at least I tried it so my parents can get off my back and stop saying " ya don't know what ya missin son".