We woke up at 4:30am as our train reached Hanoi station, a whole hour earlier than it was due. We got off and sat in the station building alongside a homeless woman whilst we tried to wake up and decide what we were going to do next. We weren't getting picked up until 8am for our 'Halong Bay' boat trip which meant we had a fair bit of time to kill! We waited for almost an hour before trying to get a taxi, which proved to be a chore as is usually the case in Asia. There were plenty of Mai Linh taxis waiting outside of the train station which we had been told were the most reliable company to use throughout Vietnam, but when we asked a number of drivers to take us to 'Hoan Kiem Lake' they all refused and some even laughed at us! One driver instead pointed us in the direction of the dodgy taxi drivers which really annoyed us. Anyway, we were approached by somebody who quoted us 150,000 dong even though we knew it only cost 24,000 on the meter. The maximum we were willing to pay was 30,000 dong which one person agreed upon so we made our way to the taxi. However, once we set off the taxi meter started to increase rapidly and I knew then that there was no way the driver was going to accept the agreed price. We arrived at 'Hoan Kiem Lake' but the driver had locked the boot of the car so I was unable to get out my backpack. He demanded that we pay the fare first but I demanded he open the boot. He opened it in the end but then started claiming he had said the fare would be 30,000 dong per km, even though he had actually said 10,000 dong per km. In the end Andrew just flung the money in the door, which was over 100,000 dong and we walked to the edge of 'Hoan Kiem Lake' in a rather angry state! There were loads of people up and about at 5:30am either practicing Tai Chi or simply walking around the perimeter of the lake as a form of early morning exercise. We looked a little odd sat on a curb all sweaty with our backpack watching the hustle and bustle. We decided to walk to the 'Travel Agent' to drop off our backpack before getting some breakfast but it was closed so we made our way back to a restaurant called 'Thuy Ta' at the edge of 'Hoan Kiem Lake'. We grabbed a seat outside and caught the bright red sunrise above the lake whilst eating our breakfast.

We returned to the 'Travel Agent' where the friendly owner turned up and gave us a free bottle of water each. The bus picked us up at around 8:15am and it then took another hour to pick up everybody else in Hanoi. I was so tired that I kept drifting off to sleep. We made a short stop around half-way before we reached 'Halong Bay' where we were led to a small wooden boat which took us to the A-Class cruise junk. We were given an ice tea welcome drink before being given the key to our cabin. We manged to have a quick shower before we ate our seafood lunch as we cruised amongst the 1,969 limestone karst islands that made up 'Halong Bay'. We then grabbed a beer and went to sit on the top deck where it was so hot that after around ten minutes we returned to the shaded lower deck! We piled back onto the smaller boat which took us to 'Vung Vieng' floating fishing village. The village contained around fifty families with a total population of approximately two hundred and fifty residents, including almost one hundred children. We opted for a small bamboo boat rather than a kayak so that a villager would row us around the area as I would have had some difficulty using an oar. On our return to the cruise junk we were served a complimentary glass of wine and fruit platter whilst we watched the making of a fresh spring roll. Andrew was by now an expert so he made a fair few. We got to sample the end product before it was time to swim. I obviously couldn't get into the water with my cast and Andrew decided he wouldn't bother either so we had another shower as it had been an extremely humid day. We sat with a beer and watched the day turn to night. We got talking to an Australian family and so we sat together for dinner. We had a couple of beers but called it a night at around 10pm as we were pretty tired after such an early morning. We didn't even feel like we were sleeping on a boat as our cabin was the nicest place we had stayed so far in Vietnam!