Vietnam day 2: Halong Bay

This was the most mind-blowing day of the holiday, I'll get straight to the pictures so you can see why.

I saw this out of the bus window:

On the boat around the Bay:

(Our lunch - which my chopstick skills made a very leisurely affair)

HALONG BAY:

On a small boat rowed by a local woman:

(The Small Boats and The Local Women)

                                                   (A shrine!)               (Yeah, we went through here!)

After we were rowed around the Bay we got back on the first boat and were taken to some caves in one of the mountains! Turns out they like to light things up in Vietnam.

After the caves we got back on the boat, back on the bus and then got a sleeper train down to Hue!

AND IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! 

We all tried to get into our bunks with our bags on and got wedged in (turtles come to mind) because they were so small so we had to do some good twisting, grunting and flailing to free ourselves.

When we finally fell into our bunks I eagerly made mine a bit more to my tastes using my two trusty pashminas as sheets to protect myself, in a sandwich like fashion, from the bedding (and Brinna kindly lent me a scarf of hers to wrap my pillow in), popped on my long sleeved top and double-socked-it-up (minimising skin contact obviously) and I was as happy as a bug in a nice, clean rug. 

Little did I know how hygienic the next sleeper train would be....*shudder* I mean after experiencing THAT I would have been very happy to floss my teeth with the straggling threads on the blanket that I so carefully protected myself from...

(See! I DID do some work!)