Halong Bay

6/10/11

Today started off with a free morning in Hue, we had a long train journey coming up that afternoon so most of us hanged around in the hotel before heading to get lunch and pick up some take away food for the train. The train journey was going to take 13 hours so when we boarded around 3pm that afternoon the time was spent playing cards, talking and drinking. At around 10pm I turned in to try and get some sleep.

7/10/11

Our ride came to an end at around 4am when we pulled into Hanoi train station, but this wasn't to be are final stop for the day, instead we jumped into a minibus for 3 hours to head east towards Halong Bay. As we neared our final distination the famous islands the bay is known for suddenly started to appear on the horizen at sea. But by the time we reached our hotel for the night they were shraded in mist as light rain started to fall. The temperture up north is much cooler than anything we have experienced so far, I even wore my fleece for the first time!

That afternoon we had a 4 hour junk boat trip around the islands. First we were served a seafood lunch including prawns, squid, crab and fish. For me it was the first time I had eaten only thing like this so I was surpised to find out how nice it was. After a quick stop we went for a slow cruize amoung the hundreds of small islands, with mist hanging around them there was even more of an peaceful atmosphere. It's an incredable sight to see all these rocks poking out of the sea, the place reminded me of Jurrasic Park abit. Finally we stopped off to visit an recently discovered cave system on one of the islands.