Kirsti Mathiasen

We woke up in the morning on the boat after a comfortable nights sleep listening to the water and being rocked gently to sleep. I had a fantastic sleep to be honest! Breakfast was served fairly early and then we began our return journey to the bay. It was raining, but hot enough that the drops dried immediately so we still sat up top on the sun beds. I spent most of the morning reading my book just enjoying some solitude in a group. We ate lunch on the boat as well before catching a bus to return to Hanoi for our last night together as a group.

We had an hour when we returned to shower and get ready for our last family dinner! We went to a Vietnamese restaurant and I had my last pho and salad rolls. And wasn't overly impressed haha, definitely have had better this trip, but I'm happy to say that the Vietnamese restaurants at home are ok par with the food we've been eating. So I won't miss the food too much!

After dinner we went to a bar across the street from our hotel and stayed out far too late for having to be up at 5am the next day. But hey, last night together! We had fun socializing and there were some teary goodbyes at the end of the night... "I'm just sporting so hard my eyes are sweating"Leia mais

Today we took a 4 hour bus ride to Halong Bay to spend the night on a Junk Boat! We stopped at an art market along the way and had to wait at the harbour for a while when we arrived because the ship wasn't completely ready for us yet. We took a small boat out to the big boat and began our tour of the Bay!

Just beautiful. The photos that didn't fit in today's post will be in tomorrow's, but I can see why Halong Bay was named a 7th new Wonder of the World by UNESCO. Appropriately, Halong Bay means Dragons Teeth. The only thing that took away from the experience was the sheer number of boats out there, it was incredible. But, blue water everywhere and little hills of rocks and some trees popping up everywhere you look. Pretty cool. We drove for about 4 hours just through all these different little rock formations taking in the view. It was cloudy and kind of cool so no chance of burning on the rooftop patio anyway.

We made a stop at a cave that was discovered by two kayakers who followed some monkeys inside. It was a pretty neat cave but I had a really hard time enjoying it because there were so many people you couldn't walk at your own pace, literally packed in behind and ahead. And after all the caves we've seen already... But the difference with this one was the really cool ceiling! It looked a bit like popcorn to me.

After the cave they took us to a beach which was also packed. We did swim even though it started to drizzle a bit, and left quickly because there were too many people there for us to comfortably enjoy ourselves. I guess we've been spoiled with the nearly private beaches we've had until now.

After the beach we returned to the boat where we stayed for the rest of the night. We had dinner and drinks on board, played games, had drinks, and socialized. Favourite part of the night was discovering that there were bioluminescent Plankton in the water!! I guess because of the clouds they didn't disappear like they usually do. They only show up 2 or 3 times a month apparently, we were lucky to see it! It was so cool though. We sat at the end of the boat where the anchor drops and threw water into the water below disturbing it so we could see the vibrant colours. They were blue and white and everywhere. So cool! At times they would disappear from being disturbed too often and we'd have to wait awhile for them to come back. What a time!Leia mais