Charles woke us at 4am this morning as the train was due to get into Hanoi at 4.30am, I had slept like a log following the red wine last night. We then got a bus to Halong Bay which took around 4 hours. I had taken my malaria tablet when I woke this morning without any breakfast, which was totally stupid as I then felt sick the whole journey. When we got to the hotel we all had the buffet breakfast while we waited for our rooms to be ready, and I did start to feel slightly better after food. I was sharing with Lauren again so it was nice to have the company.

We weren't due to go on our cruise until 11.45am, and since we had been up since 4am, Lauren and I had a couple hours snooze before getting up and showered. It was absolutely freezing here, the weather since we arrived in Hanoi just looked like home. Dark, wet, miserable and cold. I felt really tired and weak when I woke but after a warm shower I felt a bit better. We got a bus down to the port which was full of big wooden sailing boats which are called junk boats. Our boat was amazing, the tables were all set out for lunch with white table cloths, and it looked sweet. Halong Bay is famous for the Limestone islands that fill the bay and is a world heritage site, due to the 1,969 islands. The islands have amazing caves inside and we stopped for an hour on one island and walked through two massive caves.

The bay also contains floating villages, which I had never seen anything like it before. They have a small house and they make their living from fishing, so outside their houses are fish farms. These people have been born on these floating islands and very rarely go to shore. There is a pub, school and hospital in the village and it was such a sight to see.

We were served lunch when we first got on the boat, which included fish soup (which was really good as it was freezing), huge prawns, crab, some sort of fish, squid, rice and noodles. It really was an amazing lunch but as I still wasn't feeling right, I didn't manage to eat a great deal. When we stopped at the caves in the middle of the afternoon was where I all of a sudden felt awful. During the first cave I was fine but when we got to the second, I started sweating buckets, feeling really dizzy and sick. Everyone else was freezing cold so I knew I wasn't right, I couldn't get back to the boat quick enough and started to panic because the tour was taken ages. In the end I just had to tell the guide I was going back myself, and by the time I got back I was shaking and shivering so much. Charles was really good and kept asking if I was OK. My tummy was cramping but I wasn't sick. It didn't take long before I started to feel a bit better, I just drank loads of water but was still shivering away.

We got back to the hotel around 5pm and we were meant to meet for tea at 7pm. I felt exhausted and so weak, I ended up going straight to my bed and didn't wake till 7.30pm. I didn't feel up for going out so just had a quiet evening in the room, still wasn't right.. hot one minute and freezing the next. I'm just hoping its a 24 hour thing and I feel better in the morning. Going to give my tummy a rest from food too and see if that helps.

Let's hope I manage to sleep now after sleeping most of the day :( xxx