Before we left our home stay in Hoi An, the family gave us a packed lunch to take with us on our really long bus journey, which was so sweet of them. The bus company picked us up from there and took us to the bus terminal. We had to take a bus to Huy, which took around 5 hours, then we had to change there for our sleeper bus to Hanoi, which was another 15 hours. Let's just say, things were a bit close for comfort on the bus. John and I got given seats right next to each other at the back of the bus, but as it was full, we had a Vietnamese guy who had to sleep right beside John. He turned out to be the worst snorer ever and took up loads of room. John wasn't too pleased to say the least.

When we arrived at Hanoi in the morning, we got dropped off close to our hotel, so we just walked there, it wasn't far at all. One of the main reasons for booking our hotel was because we read he online reviews and people who stayed there organised their Halong Bay cruise through them and really enjoyed it. I heard so many stories about the cruises here not being what you sign up for and basically they try to scam money out of you. I guess you get what you pay for, so although the cruise was a a bit more than we wanted to pay, we were willing to do it so we could have a good experience at Halong Bay. Not that it means you're guaranteed to have a good time by booking a more expensive tour, but it helps when you've heard about a good reputation of a company.

Booking our Halong Bay Cruise

So after we'd arrived in the hotel, we couldn't check into the room right away, so we asked about the cruises. We got given the brochures, the company they use is Galaxy Cruises. The pictures of the room and of the boat looked very smart and the itinerary was good. We read some more reviews of Galaxy Cruises and they were all good, so we decided to go for it and book our Halong Bay tour for the next day. The hotel phoned through to check and it was fully booked for tomorrow, but they had it available for the next day. We'd only booked one night here, so we booked to stay another night and booked the cruise for the day after. The hotel were really helpful in arranging it all, then they let us check into the room, so we went for a nap as we were still tired from taking a night bus.

Once we got up, we went for a walk around the lake; Hoan Kiem, which is the lake in the old town. There is a pagoda, a Japanese bridge and also some Japanese temple. Although we didn't go in the temple. We went for some lunch, then came back to the lake to sit and rest. While we were there, a group of students approached us. They wanted to ask us some questions and to practise their English. So we sat chatting to them for a while and it was quite pleasant chatting to some Vietnamese students.

The next day, we had a really lazy day and got our stuff ready for Halong Bay. We just went into the old town in Hanoi, walked around for as long as we could bear in the heat and got lunch in a little cafe. We walked back round by the lake and actually walked across the Japanese bridge and looked at the pagoda there. I also saw a statute of an hands holding a world, appropriate for us. We've literally had the whole world in our hands on our trip! We found somewhere to eat dinner and went back to our hotel. That night it started pouring down and there was a big storm. I hope it's going to clear the air ready for our Halong Bay trip tomorrow.