Halong Cruise, Day 2

Woke up at 6 this morning to watch sunrise on the water.  The sunrise is difficult to see in the winter here.  But it was still beautiful.

We checked out of our rooms and then went for an awesome hike on Cat Ba island.

Loved this  group! At least 8 countries represented

Ready to get off the ship

Views from the top of the hike

We stayed on Car Ba Island. Ami and I went to our room (which had one king and one twin bed... I still can’t fig out the weird bed situation in this country lol like why don’t we both get big beds?) and fell asleep... we missed the whole day to play on the island 😂😂.  However, we made it up in time for sunset, followed by dinner of a Vietnamese bbq.

Cat Ba:  It's a cute island. If I were to do this again, I'd have stayed on Cat Ba Island and done a day trip into Ha Long Bay, rather than stay on the boat.  Live and learn.

The people on our cruise are so awesome.  I feel so blessed to have met them all!  We went out for drinks with a group.  Found a bar near the hotel called Rose Bar, played games and just had fun.  One of the Chilean girls and the Italian guy played me and another American in foosball... they were INCREDIBLE. I’ve got to step up my game!


We also learned that “balloons” mean laughing gas. So of course we had to try that.  After a few drinks, I also decided to take over as DJ and put on Reggaetón and pulled everyone on the dance floor.  A Vietnamese guy decided to make it his mission to try to impress me so he started buying rounds of tequila shots for me and all my friends.  The next day I really regretted taking 4 of them.

When we finished at the club, we wandered around and grabbed food by the beach.  6am came very early.

In true backpacking style, I didn’t pack a sweater, so my new friend, Evi, gave me hers because she was going to throw it away anyways 😂 I still made it look classy