Tuesday 18th March 2008

We got up nice and early this morning and, after helping ourselves to some of the free breakfast, we checked out and waited for our tour bus to pick us up. In true Vietnam fashion, I went to find out what was happening when the bus was over twenty minutes and nobody batted an eyelid! It eventually turned up and we were soon en-route to Halong Bay.

Halong Bay is a group of more than 3,000 islands that rise from the clear emerald waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and is a Unesco World Heritage site. We were driven to Halong City and then we boarded an old Vietnamese Junk Boat, where we were going to be sleeping tonight. At this time of year the weather is usually wet and drizzly around these parts and that was the way it was today - but it didn't make a difference, it was still stunning! We spent all day on the boat, eating lunch and then tea. In between we stopped at a floating fishing village where some people got off, but it was too cold to go swimming so we stayed onboard. Tonight, a group of us got together and spent the night chatting, drinking and playing cards. We all had a really good time and at just before midnight we all returned to our small cabins.

Yippee! Another night on the ocean waves!