In what was a ridiculously early morning for us, we hurried downstairs for a couple pieces of our free breakfast (toast with jam and a banana) and then waited for the guide to show up. There was some huge confusion (as has become the norm over here) over a girl named Alex, who was down there the whole time but we just could never find her even after talking to her a bunch of times. We were pretty excited on the bus, it was barely 1/3rd full, had leg room, AC, it was nice… we got really good feelings about the trip.

Funny, as I type that, at least for me, it almost has an ominous feel to it.

We got to Ha Long Bay after about 4 or 5 hours, shuffled on to a Junk boat:
Junk Boat Image 1
Junk Boat Image 2

It was a pretty decent group of people, all about the same age except for a poor old dutch couple who much have felt a little stranded with all of us despite our best efforts to make them feel included. We headed over to an island and went into a massive cave which was apparently only found 20 years or so ago. It was one of those ones all lit up with coloured lights and it looked very cool. Then it was back on the boat, past the fighting cock island, then on to a floating village which consisted of about 10 shacks on small rafts. We had some time to swim and kayak around. The kayaks went quickly, so we jumped off the boat to swim until one came back. They were 2 person kayaks and for a while Amy and I had Jen in tow, then she worked her way up to sort of sit in one of the bag compartments. It was a lot of work to climb out of the water because the ladder was a good foot or so above the water so Amy and Jen pretty much just swam, but I got out to jump off the boat a few more times.

We ate dinner and avoided the horrible karaoke on the roof while enjoying the night sky. The current through the islands spun the boat in slow circles and it was a really relaxing way to spend an evening… minus the guy who took muscle relaxants and had way to much to drink who eventually decided to jump off the boat in the middle of the night to swim to another boat in the bay after an hour or so of threatening. The staff did the best they could with the guy, but he was just too far gone. It all ended fine though.

We headed to our cabins to sleep for the night. Both our room and Jen’s room had a cockroach in the shower/shower drain, but other than that they were enjoyable enough.