Halong Bay Extravaganza

Ha Long Bay was amazing... the views and the scenery were absolutely unbelievable. We arrived with a group of 30 and got on this great boat. There were lawn chairs on the top deck and then a dinning room in the middle and rooms on the bottom floor. We were with all young people from our The Backpacker's Hostel so to say the least we drank a little too much rice wine. We did a lot of jumping off the boat, late night swimming (aka skinny dipping with florescent jelly fish) and had a goood time. When we arrived at our first destination we all got onto kayaks and headed out to this cave. Lauren and I were a little special in the kayaks, we couldn't quite keep it straight... With Lauren being left handed, and Meg having shoulder surgery our left side was a little too dominate. We were fun to watch because we zig-zagged through of our new friends creating a mini game of bumper boats. After a few hours we were very very tired so we headed back to the boat. The next day we woke up and were on the move again, we were off to meet yet another small transfer boat that took us out to this private island. The hostel had bought a white sand beach and had set up a little place to eat and some wooden crates to sleep on, quite rugged, not the same as the luxury camping we are used to. We did some tubing which the British call "dounuting or biscuting" and lots of swimming... It was also about 100 degrees so trying to fall asleep and not get eaten alive my mosquitos was quite a task but we rose to the occasion and embraced it. We created a little sleeping area with a mosquiton net, some rope and lots of bug spray.... lets just say we were ready to leave when dawn came.. After a good swim to wash the sweat off, and tipping over our passed out trip leader off a floating dounut, we were headed back to Hanoi to catch our overnight train to Sapa!!