We woke up early in our “Little Hanoi Hostel 2” on the 21st of August in order to get on the tourist bus which picked us up at our hotel to take us to Halong Bay. The bus was already full as we got on and we were told that we had a 4hour drive (for 175km) ahead of us. After a mandatory tourist stop after about 2hours at a huge warehouse type building which sold a ton of overpriced, cheaply produced tourist stuff, we continued our journey east.