Royal International Hotel & Villas Halong Bay

After a 3 hour journey, Hanoi to Ha Long City, Helen and I are split away from he main group of the bus and into a new group. Some Italians, French and English.<br><br>Our boat look's great, we approach on a launch, climb aboard and meet our host, grab a cooling wet towel. We have a drink then are shown to our room's, it is great.<br><br>We have a busy afternoon ahead visiting some caves and sea Kyaking at sunset. Dinner is served at 7.30, fish rice ...

... quiet one that night and watched the other group have a few beers and play drinking games.<br><br>This trip was one of the best we have been on during our travels due partly to the great group we had but mostly because Halong Bay is one of the most amazing places on Earth!!<br><br>Only one more stop to go in Vietnam which is the mountain town of Sapa before we leave and head over the border to Laos - CANT WAIT!!<br><br>Lots of Love<br><br>Tom and Carolyn<br>xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <br>

... the kids to open, use and close an Activity, in particular because the "Voice" menu can be changed to the Vietnamese language. Within a few minutes the children were typing "Sin Chao Nancie." Hello in Vietnamese. And lots more too!<br><br>The successful 2 hour session ended with watermelon, a snack treat Tuyen and I brought from the mainland. The children leave for a break and go home in their boats. We will have another session this afternoon. <br><br>

<!--[if gte mso 9]><br> <br> Normal<br> 0<br> <br> <br> false<br> false<br> false<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> MicrosoftInternetExplorer4<br> <br><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><br> <br> <br><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]> classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39- B33AF135CC4D" id=ieooui&gt;<br><br><![endif]-->This is the ...

... the point in the day (one) when we got lost and the boys got all &#8216;we don&#8217;t need a map - we know where were going&#8217; while me and Miriam tried to work out where on earth we were to no avail. To be fair no one actually told me they were following me and I was just aimlessly wandering in what I thought was the general direction of the hostel. Turned out in the end that it wasn&#8217;t but then people should tell me that they&#8217;re delegating important tasks to me ...

... kayaks, the ladies on rowing boats selling Bia hoi, the local home brewed beer. <br><br>It was dinner time, oh look we had had the same for lunch except an extra fish head, however<br>the portion sizes were a lot smaller than for lunch and for six people to share. Everyone still hungry, we looked at what the crew were eating, and they had the rest of our fish and 3x the amount we had for 4 people. <br><br>It was a good thing we ended up with a good group of people on our boat who ...

Halong Bay is stunning, just under 2000 limescale islands and it's the perfect place to chill out for a couple of days. <br><br>We spent the first day/night on a 'Junk' (the name of the big boats) cruising around the islands, went into a huge cave and did some kayaking.<br><br>Day 2 we headed to Cat Ba island, the largest inhabited island ...

... amp; went kayaking for 40 minutes, The water was so warm &amp; glassy until another storm came over, with lightning &amp; thunder which was a bit of a worry being out on the water. We moored nearby for the night &amp; there was about another 10 boats around us full of tourists as well. So pretty &amp; peaceful &amp; hoping for some sunny weather tomorrow<br><br> <br>

... row up to your junk from the floating villages, their little row boats overflowing with beer and Oreo cookies. The crew were also up on deck celebrating that evening and we soon all got drinking together - Raj's snake wine disappeared pretty quickly - and before long they were singing us Ho Chi Minh songs before they (wisely) took themselves off to bed. <br><br> <br>