So I get up nice and early, 5.30, to hopefully get a glimpse of a lovely morning sunrise. I am disappointed to report that instead of a sunrise, I was greeted with a lovely cloudy sky. It just got brighter as the morning went on, but no big burning ball in the sky! I'm pretty gutted, but being up so early does allow me to see how the locals live in the morning. There are a lot of tour boats anchored up, and so there starts to appear little boats selling stuff. Of course all can be bargained with, but these women row for 20mins to get to the boats. Then one of the crew on our boat charges her to sell to us. You've got to admire the effort that they put in. One boat even had a woman with a fish in the boat, it was alive scuppering around in the bottom of the boat. It looked like a stingray, with a hard shell. She was kind of playing with it. Weird!
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It was time for breakfast, I feel like I have been up for days already! Again the breakfast was s***. I have to sit at a table of 6 and we share the food. Tofu, some bread and not enough butter to go around. After this we stay anchored for most of the morning, before we go back to Cat Ba island to pick some people up. Then it is the direct trip back to Ha Long town, there is a bit of a wind and so it is nice to sit up on deck as we motor on. Dock and off the boat and in to a mini bus to the place where we are getting lunch. Again another calamity, where people have to sit in groups of 6 so that the food gets rationed properly. Not that the food was of a superior standard than the boat, but knowing that I am not going to be eating for a while I make sure and pack away a good amount of rice especially due to the lack of meat. Then we have to wait around for nearly an hour before the bus comes to get us. Our tour guide likes to call this 'free time' it's funny how she keeps referring to the waiting, as free time. On to the same type of bus that I got on the way here. This time though I make sure that I am on my way to the back to ensure some leg room. All looks good as we set off, with just Pete and myself in the back row, which holds 5, plenty of leg room. Of course this was too good to be true, as after a while the bus pulls over and the driver makes a call, suddenly 3 more people turn up, significantly reducing our leg room. Awww well. Pete and I chat all the way back, about 3 hours, before we stop off at another shop to buy stuff. What's interesting about these places is that most of the stuff looks really nice, in fact if I wasn't travelling I would have considered some plates, of course nothing has a price on it, just a code, which I presume refers to the lowest price it can be sold for. The bus drops me back to the hostel and I arrange to meet the guys later on that night for a few beers.
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I get in to the hostel and I'm given a different room. There is a girl here, Alexandra from Norway. She is pretty chatty and I chat to her until it is time to meet the guys. She is a spiritualist who believes she has had many lives before this on, many as a male emperor. She shows me her holiday video......interesting. Tells me of her travels and how she stole things in Japan, but did not feel good about it. Now believes karma is happening as her visa back to India was declined and she had spent a lot of money getting the medical tests in order to apply. All in all a very interesting person, if not completely crazy! I take her number and tell her I will give her a call once we head out and she can join us. I get to the guys hostel and wait for a few mins, they weren't there so I leave my number at reception to pass on when they get back, and I head back up the street. I notice Alex sitting at one of the bars and so I pull up a plastic chair and join her. We have a few beers and go around a few bars before heading home.