We were awoken at 7.30 with a little Vietnamese man knocking and saying "kiss me, wake up plis" and then hand breakfast in the restaurant bit of the boat again. We then had some time to swim with the giant jelly fish - which I didn't - before chugging back to Halong City Harbour.

We had to check out of our rooms so they could be scrubbed and changed ready for the next group, so we dumped our bags at the front of the boat by the big cracked wooden dragon's head and climbed up to the roof for some sunbathing, reading and admiring the view-ing.

Halong Bay is a really very beautiful place, but like so many of the hot spots for tourists, it runs like a military operation, with each tourist shuttled around like a number and groups lined up en masse and politely pushed onto their assigned vessels. I enjoyed the 2-day trip but it was a shame how very heavily touristy it was - I dread to think what high season is like! The whole time we've been in Vietnam it's been the Vietnamese peoples' holiday, so we have mostly been around the wealthy local families. Which has its pros and cons.

We arrived back in Halong City just before lunch and were then delivered to a huge hall where they served us all with copious amounts of food. Then gave us plenty of time to buy souvenirs - which we didn't - before the 4hr cramped bus back to Hanoi (with the standard half-way diversion via another tacky souvenir shop that happens to have a toilet).

We got back to Hanoi around 4, and had planned to catch a night train that same night to Lao Cai City right up near the Chinese border. This left around 8 I think, so we had some hours to kill - which we did with some food in a little cafe with a Western menu (shamefully we needed our fix, a break from rice and noddles) and then to a lovely shisha bar for a big pipe and a hilarious game of Jenga.

We had left our bags with Ian, or it might have been Ian's friend, or sister, so had to go back over that way to pick them up and get a taxi to the train station. The taxi driver was a massive grump and dropped us annoyingly short but still deliberately away from the station entrance kind of distance. Once inside, we trotted around from room to room, showing our tickets to people who looked official and they would normally shout "NO" and shove us in the direction we were apparently supposed to go in. It turned out we had to go out of the main bit to find the man with the bum-bag who rips up your tickets and then gives you reams of paper and staples it all in strange places, then go back to the grumpy lady in the bit where the melted Toblerone stand is and she is no longer grumpy she is now happy and lets you through without any shoving.

Then one just has to meander across the rails looking at the trains until one sees one that looks about right. Though a little tiny man came over and escorted us to our carriage, showing our tickets for some more unnecessary stamping and faffing along the way when required. It was quickly obvious that he would be asking for money at the end, but US$4 was a rip off, so we gave him 2 (which is still LOADS) and he practically spat on us with his expression and violently slapped the air between us before stamping off deliberately loudly like I used to when I wasn't allowed to stay up late.

This left us in the small 2-up-2-down carriage which was actually rather nice. The first part of the journey was through the suburbs, over bridges where so many young couples had some on mopeds for some sneaky dates lined up along the bridges over the river. Julia and I lay and stared out guessing which stage of dating each couple was at, spotting the ones breaking up, making up after an argument and even spotting the sneaky pretending-to-yawn-to-sneak-your-arm-onto-your-date's-shoulder trick occurring. Wonderful.

So we lay there for 9 hours.