After a night of attempted rowdiness we woke up to the beautful surrounds of Halong Bay and enjoyed our first normal breakfast for the week. Consisting of toast, bacon and eggs, most of us were able to enjoy what was on offer, except for Karina "Tequila Sunrise" Voss who managed to be the first up, and also the first back to bed after becoming increasingly seedy.

First item on the list today was to get off the Junk we were on and have a paddle through a cave/tunnel to come out in a area surrounded by the islands where monkeys eliedigly inhabit, although it seemed it was also to hot for them to come and say hello. We watched as one of the tour guides in another boat tried to get back into it after a little swim, but the boat was to high and difficult to get into so it was more like watching a baby walking for the first time, but he did manage to eventually get back on with thunderous applause from our little boat. The boats themselves weren't really boats, they resembled a barge that was rowed by the efforts of a tiny Vietnamese local. The paddles they use are very thin and the rowing action is very unconventional, which ensured a nice slow and steady trip for the ones suffering hangovers, but wouldn't be able to outrun a piece of driftwood.

Lunch was another 5 course meal. Believe it or not we are all a bit sick of eating like kings every meal! Ahhhhh gotcha, we loved it. It was all very nice food, but not quite the same as the day before. The beef looked as if it was cooked (or not cooked) using a fan blowing hot air, it wasn't the worst I've ever eaten but with nice chicken, fish and customary rice available, most of us avoided it. We also recieved the bill from the trip, and we managed to have around 30 beers, 8 cocktails, and a few other things in our 24 hours on the boat.

The rest of the day wasn't too exciting, most of us taking advantage of the bus ride to catch up on some sleep. On the way back to Hanoi we stopped at a ceramics village where they make teapots, mugs, vases, plates and all that jazz. The thing about visiting places like this on our trip was that it was all nice, but we could only buy small things to bring home when there were many pieces that were bigger and better.

Karina, Geoff and I ventured out for dinner and hit a Thai express near the Lake of The Restored Sword, while Bully and Dinsy had a man-date at the hotel. Karina manged to order a lovely chicken dish that was loaded with milk and cream, and we all ordered something that was spicy, and for some reason it was flippin spiiiiiiiiiiiiiicccyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!

To top a nice relaxing day off and to save getting all worked up walking home we opted to get a taxi back to the hotel. A good idea at the time of the night and for how busy it was, much safer than walking the streets right? Wrong. The first bad sign was him trying to tell us it was going to cost 200,000 VND to take us to our hotel. We should have just walked (there were no other taxi's around), but we negotiated a less rediculus price and still went. The second bad sign was he was he was freakin nuts. If he has driven a car for longer than a week at a time without knocking someone off their scooter it would be a massive surprise... Ever had someone drive a little aggressive before while you sat in the passenger seat waiting for the inevitible crash? Yes? Great! Now multiply that agression by 100, the traffic by 1000, and the certainty in which the car was going to have a bike rider as a decoration on the dash by 10000 and you have our 1km trip to the hotel. It is very hard to explain just how insane he drove, but imagine a taxi driver, with blaring chinese techno music, sitting on the horn the whole trip (music was to deguise the horn) and accelerating and pushing his way through stopped traffic. At any given time there would have been 3-5 other people or vehicles less than 1m away from the car, so close that we could have wound down the window and butt-slapped them. Ahhh what a nice way to end the day...

Safe to say that we have learnt that lesson and the next day we walked just about everywhere we needed to go. Luckily the next day we had a good calm taxi driver to instil confidence again (he was from a more reputable company which we will be exclusive to from now on).