Halong Bay boat trip(Day 1)

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Halong Bay is a world Unesco site with just under 2000 islands just 3 hours from Hanoi. There must be at least 100 companies organising trips to the bay. Even worse the ones that are mentioned and get good reviews in the Lonely Planet have their names mimicked by other tour operators who brazenly just open up shops with the exact same name. Counted at least 20 places called Sinh Tours!!! Ridiculous!! So hearing the stories of nightmare trips we spent about 4 hours chasing our one down. Didnt do the expensive Delux tour thinking there wouldnt be any backpackers(and were scabs of course!!) and didnt want to do the cheapo one cos we heard the horror stories(no water, crap food, staff robbing people and people drowning).

So we went midrange and got one for 45 dollars. Turns out that the company we picked did internet bookings so our group was made up of about 10 "older" tourists who booked online and a few younger people. They also turned out to be all from Germany, Austria and Switzerland so they all spoke German to eachother. Great!!! We didnt really care as not talking to anyone after listening to the highly intellectual diatribe of an Irish dullard the other night talking about why Sein Fein should be leading Ireland may have turned us off tlaking to strangers forever!!! They were all really nice and friendly though so it worked out well.

So got to the boat and were chuffed with what we got. It was lovely and the room was really nice aswell. For lunch it was all fish and it was fish practically for the rest of the trip. I didnt really like seafood but it was beautiful(squid was gorgeous!!) and im now converted!!! So we sailed(engine)for a few hours through the islands and the views were spectactular. We passed by floating villages were the men fish and the women sell fruit to tourists. It was sureal seeing people living a couple of miles out to sea.

We took a tour of a cave which was impressive, then boring, then sickening. There was this old man walking around in his speedo's and everyone was disgusted!!! A Vietamese guy went over to this woman, grabbed her and started pointing at him and laughing. It turned out to be his wife and she wasnt impressed at all!!! We couldnt stop laughing. Oh and Melissa insisted she take the photo.

So after that we stopped at an island with a little beach to go swimming for sunset. We then sailed for a little while longer to a cove and had another beautiful dinner and got to drinking. It was crazy as there was litterally 100 boats anchored in the cove for the night. With 3/4's of our boat in bed by 9pm(no joke) it was a quiet one. And we could hear all the parties(and see people puking over the sides!) on the other boats. Nothing to complain about cos it was one of the nicest spots i have ever been to.

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