Ha Long Bay

Over 2000 limestone islands make up this part of Vietnam, so we take the 3 day option to try and do it some justice. A bus picks us up from our guesthouse and drives to Ha Long city where we board our boat (v posh). The 3 of us decide to split up as most people are travelling alone and its the quickest way to get to know the rest of the group so I share with Rachel, from Gloucester. We kindly take the double bed so the boys are spared that and get the twin rooms. We sit on the deck sipping beers and chatting as the boat heads out towards the islands. We are set up with tandem sea kayaks (I grab Mark quickly) and spend an hour exploring. We then head off towards surprising cave, which is really big with 3 chambers, the limestone is worn away to produce stalegmites and stalectites and rock formations that look like Buddha, amongst other things. After the cave the boys go swimming, as its getting a bit dark Rach & I give it a miss. When jumping off the boat Kurt manages to soak one of the women trying to sell food and drink to us from their rowboats so guiltily he buys something, and gets totally ripped off. Dinner, as are all meals except breakfast, is seafood. Yum! Afterwards Jan our guide trys to make us play an ice-breaking game which involves kissing body parts of other people, we gamely give it a go but it stalls when kurt won't let Mark kiss his forehead. Guess the family of 4 from Singapore wouldn't have liked it either. A few beers later and we're playing drinking games anyway introducing 21 and yeehaa to an international audience.

The next day we visit Cat Ba island, which is a National Park and has some rare monkeys- so rare we don't spot any. We have a mini trek up to the peak, and some more kayaking in the afternoon. The boat takes us back to Ha Long City andwe check into a posh hotel, then head out for some kareoke and beers- I sing YMCA(!)(?)(intended for Innes but he wouldn't take it) and Innes sings Painted Black, the translations of the words are pretty funny and the songs drag on forever. We finish the night by heading into a club, which contains 4 people and is huge! We get kicked out really early too. I spend the next few days with a sore throat, that'll teach me.