We went on an overnight tour to Halong Bay. Last year in Thailand, we went on a boat tour for Xmas day, and it was an awesome way to spent the day to make it specialler (..!?) when being away from the fam. So we set off from the hotel, 7 of us with the arrival of Erin, and 6 other tourists. After driving for ages, we arrived at the place to get on the boat. The boats are Chinese style if I recall, and usually have seating inside, and you can lounge around outside upstairs. To just walk onto the boat would be too simple, no we had to walk over about four boats to get to ours! Gerard was almost crushed by another boat in the process!

As it's winter in Vietnam, the north can be quite cool. This was one of the cool, shitty days! The previous day had been glorious, but trip day was overcast and misty and not warm at all! But all the same the bay did look beautiful. Halong Bay has hundreds of sea mountain things that tower out of the water, some have holes worn out of them by the sea, and all that. So throughout the day we sat round chatting, playing uno (the trip game, initially scoring was taken to see who would shout the 1st drinks at the next city, but the game sort of dissipated later...), and getting to know the other travellers. It turned out that four of the others (a Danish couple, and an Aussie couple) had paid for an overnight on the boat, but weren't going to get it. So most of the day they were battling it out with the tour guide! It didn't affect us, or our fun, but sucked for them. Anyway, we went to a huge limestone cave somewhere along the way. Honestly it was huge. As we were about to walk over and through one part Louise says to me, "Oh, that's very fallic" about a bit rock. Then as soon as we are through into the main 'cathedral' we are confronted with the MOST fallic thing you could ever see in your entire life, bar being confronted with the real thing! Out the side of a rock, is another long fallic rock, illumated red!! Now, someone had to be taking the piss when designing the illuminations of this place cos it was so blatantly obvious! So while we all stop in hysterics, and Gerard tries to capture a photo of Louise doing an inappropriate act on the rock, more people come through and of course with us all acting like 15 year olds, it doesn't take long for them to crack up too!! Oh how funny, it made the day a lot brighter I tell you!

We go back on the boat after the caves, and headed for Cat Ba Island where we were staying for the night. After dinner and starting a few drinks with the others on the tour we headed out to find some Xmas festivities. We ended up at a bar which was having a Xmas Party from 9pm, so we got started drinking and by the time the party started we were all getting well drunk! We even got a glass of terrible champayne (two if you stole another!), and we could get a present off the tree (more if you stole more - which I didn't). I was stoked cos I got a free beer! Others got random kid's socks - a single sock at that..? Jo and Louise also got the most scary looking Santa toy you could ever see. Scary enough to make any kid afraid of Santa! After this we pulled the Christmas decorations off the tree and all danced around! The night ended with this French Canadian guy insisting on dancing with me, and I insisting that I can't dance properly, but we stumbled around the floor for a while, with him teaching me, and I'm sure I improved a little - in between looking at the girls over his shoulder and laughing hysterically! When I handed him over to Erin, she fell over (as she does!), so he came back and said, at least you don't fall over ! In the end I shafted him off to Selena, and she had her dance lesson!! Random guy...

So it was a great Xmas eve. Celebrated in the perfect was, going out, drinking and dancing before going home drunk - just like I do in NZ! It was cool to get to know the others on our tour better too. Unlike last year's Thai trip where there were the ultimate in Euro-trash people, and other unsocial couples, there were a great bunch of fun people to go out drinking with.