It was D day and everyone was congregated in the foyer for 0730 to await our carriage - a 4 hour bus ride to Halong with a supposed 'culture' stop in a pottery village - this turned out to be a huge tourist shop full of nik-naks and souvenirs! Back on the bus after the usual ice-breakers - what's your name and where do you come from? We got to know some more travellers and passed the time by playing i-associate (a word association game) with 3 'Brizzy' girls (Brisbane Australia) - oh how civilised . . . . . .that would soon change once we boarded the Jolly Roger ahaaaaarrrrrrr!

There were about 30 people on our boat and we were summoned by our Kiwi guide 'Frisby' to the top deck for our do's and don'ts, this mainly involved drink related rules i.e. if anyone was caught drinking with their right hand, a call of 'BUFFALO' meant downing your current can of beer. The afternoon was fairly tame and we just chatted, had a swim stop and kayaked into a cave and explored. The bay was beautiful (even on a cloudy day) and it was interesting to see the floating villages and the fisherman at work . . . .they even had pet dogs on their little raft houses . . . or was that dinner?

Back we went to the Jolly Roger where we were served a banquet meal with whole fresh fish, calamari, king prawns and more. Unfortunately Sinead had been ill for the past few days and spent more time in the toilet than in the bar but she was slowly on the mend! The chat and the beer began to flow and the sporadic call of Buffalo set the scene for what was to come! At 9pm Frisby had set up the dining deck for a mass drinking game for everyone to get to know each other (some more than others). Sinead had to duck out at this point to save herself for the island the next day and I was left rather anxiously (I'm too old for this I kept thinking) to see what was in store! Our group was split in two and our tables were covered with a huge dragon of playing cards and a list of rules relating to each card. The aim of the game was to select a card at random and carry out the forfeit relating to that card. Forfeits ranged from dirty confessions to changing clothes with your neighbour (usually of the opposite sex) to crawling around under the table and consuming whatever drink was passed to you! Fortunately I didn't pull this card! We had a really good group onboard and everyone respected those that were already in relationships if anything a bit 'forward' was drawn. The whole night was a scream and although there were a few sore heads in the morning and I sat on Sinead when I finally got to bed at 3am, it wasn't as chaotic as I'd feared!

The 2nd day we boarded a transfer boat to 'Castaway Island', an island used exclusively by our tour operator. Here we met up with the other boat from our hostel and although we mixed a fair bit, most of us had made our bonds the night before so everyone tended to stick to their 'cliques'. We were staying in open bamboo huts on the beach with mossie nets and they even had running water and flushing western toilets! After another lovely meal for lunch the activities began. As well as beach volleyball (gutted I forgot my dog tags) and football/American football, there was rock climbing, tubing and wake-boarding. Sinead was recovering and caught some rays along with tubing with the other girlies and I played some volleyball, scaled a few cliffs (they had a proper climbing company in with all gear and tuition) and swam to a pontoon and back! The weather was gorgeous to match the scenery and it was a cracking day out!

As darkness fell, people began preparing for another night of partying . . . .for us, that involved another drinking game called slaps, which basically involved a circle of people sending a clap in a certain direction or opting to skip a person until someone messed up and had to take a drink. . . .Simples! People picked it up pretty quickly so some international drinking rules came in to catch out some more people. These included, no pinkies on your drink, no saying 'drink' or 'mine' (this resulted in 10 push-ups), no pointing, swearing or finishing a drink without a double tap on the table . . . .needless to say this perked everyone up after the heavy night previous. The rest of the night was pretty tame but fun and we again got to meet a lot of cool and interesting people (plus a few of the usual knobbers) and we were tucked up under the stars by midnight before a 7am start for the trip back to Hanoi!

After a draining couple of days, the journey back was quite subdued but it gave us the chance to enjoy our stunning surroundings and take some more snaps of some of Halong Bay's 3000 islands. We both really enjoyed the trip and meeting so many different people but it would've been nice to have a bit more culture/history mixed in with the party party . . . . . maybe we are too old after all ;)