Halong Bay

Day 34

Got up at 7 to get our stuff ready and get downstairs for breakie and a listen to the locals Dance music on full blast over jam on toast and brews.

After brekkie we got on the bus to go on the boat trip to Halong Bay. We got on the bus Ben fell straight asleep n I looked out of the window for three hours lol! (Fun Fact - Half of the Vietnamese populations surname is Nguyen!) So yesterday we thought we wud do a wash as our clothes were gettin smelly so we had our nice clean clothes in our bag along with our books ect...as I got off the bus I dropped the bag of clothes....right into a river....of poo!!!! Omg!!!! Only I cud
Do this!! Ben just looked as if he wasn't even surprised as I brought the bag of pooey clothes n books over to him oops :-o everything was smelly n brown oh dear!! So then I started to nearly be sick because of the smell so i went n got some plastic bags from the shop to put everything in, then I looked at the clothes I had on n the poo somehow had gotten all over my leggings....So there I was standing in the middle of Halong smelling like poo
Covered in poo holding a bag with clothes n books full of poo...kill me now haha!! Ben just laughed!

Ben: I don't think it was poo, who has a poo in the middle of the street? I think it was gem just over reacting!

Gem: Yes but were in South East Asia...it cud be possible, and it smelled like poo!! Anyway after we had both calmed down after the poo incident we got on the boat and sat down to lunch it was delicious fresh fish, rice spring rolls, clams (which we thought we were brave trying lol!) a garlic butter salad n oranges yummy It was delicious but my tummy was feeling a bit off for obvious reasons :-/

After lunch we arrived at the bay it was beautiful really scenic and very foggy which gave it an eerie and ghostly feel. The boat moored and we got off to get into our kayak! Life jackets on and we were paddling in no time. We got in the way of a ship and has to get out the way sharpish as it was beepin it's horn at us! Then as we paddled through a rock and a boat crashed into us coz it didn't stop! We decided to get out the way for a bit coz it wasn't working out so we went into open water and you couldn't see at all! We headed back to the dock after our 40 minute sail and got back on the boat for the next journey.

We then went to a cave found at Halong Bay 19 years ago and walked through it with a tour guide who gave us a little speech :-). The cave had multicolour lights inside and was apparently still alive! We finished the tour and headed back to the boat for the journey back. After a 3 hour bus ride we were back in Hanoi and going out for tea and drinks. Gem was taking forever to leave our room so I pretended I'd left switched the lights off and jumped out the wardrobe. I've never seen anyone so scared in my life. She screamed covered her face jumped up and down, ran back in the bathroom and told me she just nearly thrown up. Once she'd calmed down (no pun intended) I got her some famous Hanoi spring rolls and it was like it never happened! (Fun Fact - People from SE Asia dont eat at home they always eat out!) Tonight we will be leavin Hanoi so weve packed our bags and are checking out early to head for hue tomorrow another night journey from hell were guessin! G'night y'all :-) xxx
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