We were woken this morning by the light coming in through our window and looked out to see that the sun had not long risen on the peaceful waters of Halong Bay. We didn't have long to stay in bed though - pretty soon the staff were banging on our door telling us that breakfast was ready. After we'd all eaten the boat raised it's anchor and we set off. We sailed for about an hour or so and then we stopped at a fishing village. It was a really tiny place with about 20 buildings dotted about, all floating on the water. There was even a school, to which the children had to travel by boat! We spent a couple more hours sailing in and out of the islands and at one point, changed into a smaller boat that allowed us to enter some caves. When we were ready to change back to our bigger boat, we were told that we had to pay 40,000VD for our little 'excursion'. Most people happily paid (it was only just over £1), but three guys refused, so they were stopped from getting off the smaller boat and were taken out into the middle of the water until they handed over their money... ha ha - stingey fools!
This afternoon we got back to Halong City and then were driven back to Hanoi. On the way we stopped for a smashing lunch. We got back to the capital at about 5.30pm and me and Nikki set off trying to find somewhere to stay. We found one place where we'd discussed staying and luckily they had a room, so it wasn't much trouble. We collected our big rucksacks from the travel agents and checked in. We were pretty exhausted from the traveling, but not very hungry because of the huge lunch we'd ate - but we didn't want to stay in, so we went out for a coffee instead. We found a really posh bistro place and treated ourselves. I had a hot chocolate and Niks had a coffee and then we had a slice of cake each. The total came to 200,000VD, which is the most we've paid for a meal in our whole time here... it was worth it though!
Mmmmm, can't beat a nice coffee and a cake!
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