We were picked up from our hotel at 8am after a terrible night sleep. Both Leigh and I woke up about 2.30am (6.30pm UK time) and couldn’t get back to sleep until gone 4.30am. When we finally dropped off it seemed only a few minutes before the alarm was waking us up. We passed on the beef noodles for breakfast and played safe with toast before being picked up at 8am. We had a 4 hour drive to Halong Bay picking up two couples on the way. The drive was just as scary as the first taxi journey but the roads were bumpier with the added challenge of roaming cows! We drove out of the city through a mix of villages and huts at the side of the road interspersed with fields and the odd industrial estate. The fields are worked by hand or ox, with small plots of land marked out clearly making a patchwork of rice, corn and vegetable plots. It was a common sight to see people with their distinctive pointy straw hats crouched over their crops or on their bicycles taking crops to where they could sell them.
We also saw lots of women on the side of the road (equivalent to slip road on A14) selling French sticks!
We stopped of at a large shop on the way, and had the opportunity to buy some snake wine – L:
Me, Looking as good as I feel, waiting for our passports to come back. – L:
We finally arrived at Halong bay, handed over our passports to check we were ok to sail and after waiting some time, were taken to our boat. After negotiating a slippery transfer, we finally arrived on our home for the next day, ‘The Jewel of the Bay’. The boat is a floating hotel with an on board chef, dining area and cabins (an old Chinese junk boat apparently – L). In good weather you can sit and sunbathe on the deck, but as it is winter in November we were all well wrapped up. We were given out key to a cute cabins with en suite and advised lunch would be ready soon. The six of us from the coach all looked nervously at each other joking about the seafood buffet on the itinerary and how we all didn’t like fish. Surely there would be something we could eat? Out worst fears were confirmed at the sight of the nut cracker on the table next to our knife and fork and then the arrival of two plates of whole crab and shrimp.
None of us had eaten or knew what to do and we didn’t want to cause offence so the waiter took a crab and ripped it up. We all managed a few bites before we started on the shrimp. We were all getting more and more green round the edges with every bite, but the waiters were watching so we kept on.
Anna enjoying the finest crab on the ship:
Next course was squid then thankfully they brought out some rice and chicken. The presentation was amazing but sadly we just couldn’t eat much of the fish. After lunch we docked at one of the islands and took a tour of the caves inside, nicknamed the happy cave due to this rock:
Entrance to the cave, see the little people?: 
The view back to the bay from the cave entrance, our boat is the orange and yellow one in the middle - L:
Then we had the option of sea kayaking. This was fun (and dangerous! – L) although we seemed to be lagging behind. We rowed into a small cove after passing through a low cave as the light began to fade returning to the sea to find the area full of junk boats with their lights twinkling against the shapes of the rocks in the background.
Leigh decided that he should get an early night as he was feeling ill (and exhausted from lack of sleep and rowing! – L) so didn’t join the rest of us for dinner.
This turned out to be a wise decision. It seemed that what we had not eaten for lunch had been shredded and made into soup for starter and then stuffed into one of the left over crab shells. We picked our way through the food and I somehow managed to decapitate and shell and giant shrimp! Thankfully some beef and rice arrived so we didn’t go hungry! (Some of the food looks impressive though – L).
The two other couples were really nice (one from Vancouver and the other were Dutch/Irish) and we chatted over our beers. The boat was cold though so when we finally went to bed we had to use every blanket available and I slept fully clothed.
A couple of other photos from the day –L:
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