Halong Bay, where i did something brave...

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we got up early and took a bus from ninh binh to halong bay in the north of vietnam. Halong Bay is famous for its sea food andbeautiful islands, mountains and caves and it was certainly stunning to look at.

we had our own private boat where we stayed the night. it had an upper deck, dining/living room and cabins and a crew to bring us stuff and cook our meals.the sun had decided to shine so it wasperfect weather to go into the bay. the water is very clean and very blue and the mountains look as though someone has dropped them from a great height into the sea. a lot of the islands were used during the vietnam war to hide people and items and to keep them safe from the american bombs. some of the islands were even used as decoy war ships. no idea how that works but apparently it did.

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we had lunch on board the ship(still notconvinced by vietnamese cusine im afraid. lots of tofu and stuf that looks like spinach and tastes even worse) then spent the afternoon sunbathing on the top deck of the boat and playing cards, chatting etc and taking pictures. mid afternoon we arrived at Cat Ba island which has a cave network you can visit. i dont like caves at the best of times and if im honest these werent the most impressive caves ive ever seen based more on the fact they were artificial in terms of fake lighting to make them look like they had water in them and the fact they were so clean and tidy im almost sure someone comes around in the night with a bottle of cillit bang and gets rid of the water marks. there was a rock that looked like a big willy though. that cheered me up a bit.

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we left the island and anchored up for the night and here comes the brave bit. it took me about 10 minutes to pluck up the courage to jump off a 10ft drop into a waterfall in luang prabang, the drop from the roof of the boat to the water was 30ft and it was a tad on the chilly side by this time.None of the guys would jump it so it had to be done but i dont think id have done it unless the other girls jumped too, that way there was no chnce to bottle without looking like an idiot. the only problem with jumping from a great height is the 2 seconds before you hit the water when you know youre falling and yure sure youre going to break a leg upon impact. however the worst that happened is that im now covered in tiny scratched from the fish that tried to eat me up and i nearly drowned myself wriggling around because they kept tickling me. the water was a lot warmer than sitting in a boat at night but the shower i had afterwards left a lot to be desired.

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the trip was great and only marred by the ongoing animalissues that seemed to keep me awake wherever i stay.Roosters and rats. here there were no roosters (hooray for the middle of the sea)but i wasnt over the moon at walking into my cabin to find a rat munching his way through my room mates ritz biscuits. the little bugger didnt even have the decency to run awa\y when i busted him and carried on eating his biscuit like nothing had happened. obviously i did the girl thing (but no running, screaming or crying) and went and found the biggest boy on the trip to extricate his rodentship from my bedroom. by this time the rat had scarpered and priti and i spent half and hour turning our room into fort knox with tissue paper and toilet roll holders. we tried to find some duct tape for the holes but to no avail. we squished our beds into the middle of the room and slept with the light on and blankets over our heads. as soon as the boat moved in the morning the rats went loopy and we could hear them banging around in the walls. everyone else slept fine damn it. i prefer roosters i think.