Junk Boat cruise around Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay is a must do on every tourists agenda, but I hadnt realsied quite how many boats there would be chugging around the myriad of limestone karsts. I suppose Winehouse and co. have made junk pretty fashionable. Ha ha very funny there from Ed. We spent 3 days chilling on a Chinese Junk boat is what he means. We met back up with 2 friends from Bolivia would you believe it! Steph and Kyle of Arco the Wonder Dog fame. Along with Helen and Chris ( still couldn't get rid of them!) and Stu and Catherine, 2 friends of Steph and Kyle's, from good old Blighty. So we were a dominant force on the boat. We arrived with booze, much to the boatowners disgust. Come on...they wanted 30 dollars for a bottle of wine!!! The 3 day trip consisted mostly of eating and sleeping on the boat and a bit of gentle sea kayaking in the millions of limestone karsts. There was jumping into the ocean off the side of the boat too and a trip to a cave called the Amazing Cave...it actually was amazing, so amazing it kind of looked fake. Halong Bay is really beautiful and peaceful, the pictures can do the rest of the talking.

Our tour group

Ed taking a moment in the cabin, very weird little set up.

Ed chilling on the top deck, starting to see a pattern??......

Bit more active here, scared the living daylights out of us all too.

The kayaking was great fun and there was lots of racing and crashing into each other too. Mostly down to the boys.

I was quite happy letting Ed do the work

Steph and Kyle

There are villages and all sorts out there. People live in floating houses, fishing for a living and there are even floating schools. Ed was wondering though, were there really 1947 islands (when does a rock become an island, after all?) and why they bothered counting them when they ususally just round up any large number up to 4000.

Enterprising locals selling all kinds of out of date goodies to tourists.

This was a fish farm, the fish were huge! they told us they were sharks but we didn't believe them on that lie.

There was a small amount of trekking ( much to my dismay) We were not really warned about it and thankfully I had trainers. But if I had known I would have taken my trekking boots!!! Any excuse. Kyle captured my unimpressed by the trek face perfectly on photo.

Me, unimpressed, and with that weird trouser bulge again?

Errrrr a bit apt with the next photo, sorry. This is in the "Amazing Cave." Yes it looks like a massive penis

If you look back to our blog entry for Vang Vieng, Laos, the whole T-shirt and us not understanding why it was printed the way it was will now make sense. See Kyle's T-shirt from Vang Vieng. Random.

There is a bit of a story with the next set of photos. We got stuck outside Hanoi on the way back in what turned out to be the worst floods in 25 years. It had apparently rained continually for 2 days. So after 3 hours of not moving a jot, we decided to brave it and walk in the rain. It turned out to be a good 5km back to Hanoi and we were wading through ankle and knee deep water most of the time. It makes for a good story I guess. I contemplated calling it a typhoon but I think that may be going too far.

Stuck waiting for 3 hours in the van

Locals still have to get their Pho Bo fix, even in a flooded restaurant we saw on route.

Back and happy after being given a towel. Sadly no rooms left at the inn tho. Big thanks to everyone for the photos, as our camera (binned by now) was playing up. Plus Steph being super organised had a waterproof one, so it is all thanks to her really. Was ace to see you guys again!! Hope everyone is enjoying their next legs.