I Think this 2 night 3 day excursion was one of my highlights of the trip for definite! It was quite a journey before we actually got on the Imperial Legend cruise boat but it was definitely worth It! We took a smaller boat out to the actual boat and hopped onboard. It didn't look much from the outside but inside was quite nice! It had a posh wooden style interior. We got shown our rooms, we were all in one cabin. It was cosy but cool. Then we sat straight down in the dining area for some lunch as we started cruising out of the harbour. Because we were last out of our rooms we had to be separated at different tables which wasn't great but we managed. I made a new family and they looked after me :) The food just kept coming in a buffet style. It was good food and a mixed variety but we only managed about half of it before filling.
After lunch we put on our bikinis and went up on the top deck to sun bathe and take in the views. Ha long bay is a group of 1969 islands. The water is green and boiling hot!
We stopped off at a huge cave that was lit up in different colours. It had little water pools, stalagmites and stalactites. Pretty impressive I must say.
Back on board we ordered lots of cocktails and got into Boat Life (as I call it. It is my dream to live on a boat!) We reached our stopping point where lots of other boats had stopped as well. This was where we would be anchoring down for the night too. You could go swimming and kayaking. We all jumped in off the back of the boat into what felt like a bath, had a swim around, then decided that we were going to jump off the top deck. Me and Natalie jumped first while Kirstie took pictures. It was probably about 10 metres up. Nat landed wrong and slapped the back of the legs against the water. She bruised instantly! Oops. Kirstie was about to jump when the tour guide came up and shouted - no jumping! This was probably for the best as anything could of gone wrong with Kirstie's jump!
We went back to our cabin and had showers ready for dinner. There was a little welcome party just before on the top deck where everyone gathered to have drinks. A guy from Israel proposed to his girlfriend in front of everybody while we were up there, so we all celebrated. We ate endless amounts of food again, this time sat together. Afterwards we laid on the top deck and chatted whilst looking at the stars.

The next morning I got up to see the sunrise at 5:30, this is the life for me!! :) Nat and Kirstie didn't quite make it. We stopped at a pearl farm and saw the pearls still in their shells and was shown the process of development. Then we cruised through more islands to reach Cat Ba Island where we were going to stay for one night in a beach house on a private island. The place was beautiful. We had a triple room and decking over looking the bay. We had another big buffet lunch in the restaurant at the beach. That afternoon we decided to kayak around all the island and find one of the many deserted beaches to sunbathe on for a few hours. We paddled around, Kirstie and nat in one kayak and me in another. It ended up being a good hour before we found a beach to settle on and it was tiny! In between we found lots of cool lagoons and caves so it was brilliant. When we arrived back to our island like 3 hours later my family had been worried and thought we had got lost. Bless them. This is why it's good to make friends haha.
That afternoon I decided to organise a volleyball game with some of the people on our boat. We had a laugh but the game itself wasn't very successful as none of us knew how to play and we were all rubbish. Whilst we were attempting to play another group of people had started a football game against some of the Vietnamese staff so I joined in after volleyball. It was really hard playing in the soft sand and the guys were really aggressive but I enjoyed it and my team won. Came away with a few bruises though.
After a long and active day we had our bucket load of food again and settled in for the night watching a film on my iPad.
We awoke on our paradise island and the sun was already blazing hot. We had a bit of breakfast and headed back on the boat where we had a cooking lesson. We learnt how to wrap and create the perfect spring roll and then we tested them for lunch. Yum yum.
Unfortunately it was time to head back to the harbour and get our transfer back to Hanoi city.
We all had an amazing few days. The tour guide said " you haven't been to Vietnam if you haven't seen Ha Long Bay - enough said.
Xoxo