We head for our sea cruise on Ha Long bay

Today we are leaving for Ha Long  Bay right after breakfast. We are told our big cases must be out by 7am and worse, we are to have packed into our small hand luggage all we will need for the days on the sea cruise of Ha Long Bay, the rest goes into storage for a few days. Its a bit of a rush getting everything sorted and packed then breakfast and back out on to the bus for a quite long bus trip of about 4 hours. But ofcause we are all ready .
It was a pleasant trip in the bus, Quang our tour leader told us a little of his life story and it was very interesting. He also gave us lessons on how to cross streets in Vietnam and Cambodia, one must first catch the eye of a scooter driver so he knows that your about to cross the road, then one steps boldly out into the traffic and walks at a measured pace right across the road, never stopping and more importantly, never running. The drivers of all the vehicles cars, buses and scooters will automatic work out your pace and carefully drive just in front or just behind you. It works every time, they are very considerate there are no accidents or at least none we saw.. Takes courage to do it, but we did.
He also started teaching us some Vietnamese Language, we all took to this  and were soon saying a number of things.
We drove through masses of paddy fields, rice is the major crop although there is some corn growing too. The land is flat and wet with sort of moats around the paddy fields full of water, some places had thick plastic around the patches of rice, this was to keep the rats from eating the grain!
There were many small towns along the way, and eventually we came to a regular stopover place where disabled people make and sell paintings embroidery sweets and clothing as well as big statues of Buddha and other things. We all raced in and many bought the high quality goods, we just bought some sweets to bring home for all our friends and neighbours.

When we got to the ship we had a lovely cold welcome drink and nibbles and speeches before going on board our home for the next 3 days. The ship is impressive and there was a band to drum  us on to it, very noisy but nice.

The cabins are very nice, small and compact not a lot of spare room but we all have ensuite rooms. We are soon in for a lovely lunch as we pull away  from dock and out on to the bay with all the wonderful little and some huge  mountains jutting from the ocean, most beautiful, kind of very Oriental looking in a misty sort of way. This is a World Heritage listed site and I can see why, it is so beautiful, peaceful and serene just drifting slowly around the mountains in tranquillity.