We had the guts shift from 12-4 in the morning. It is difficult to navigate at night when there is no land in sight and lights just come out of nowhere. When you are on watch you have a watch officer (Dion from the staff crew was ours), someone on the helm, lookouts looking for lights/hazards and the rest of the watch is just there in case something needs to happen with the sails.

We were on morning watch and everyone was still pretty depressed and sick. I had another go on the helm and found it much easier second time round. Those of us that felt up to it (Elke, Rob and I - Scott despite being fine the night before was probably the sickest in the morning) climbed up with Paul to watch the sunrise. Shortly after our watch we changed course, heading south towards Jervis Bay and instantly I felt better as we were no longer working against the swell and the rocking wasn’t as severe.

First thing every morning we were woken by a song being played over the loudspeaker. On most days we had to come up on deck and do laps of the ship until everyone was up. Then every morning there is a morning brief. At morning brief we heard the plan for the day from our Sailmaster Kristy, a quote from Captain Damien, an always long talk from the Navigator Matt about our current position and where we were going, as well as a visit from Nanna (Mick the Engineer in a dress and wig) who raided the berths for clothes/stuff left on the floor (and not neatly put away in our lockers like they are meant to be) to be shown off to everyone.

I spent the morning exploring Sydney, but after getting very fed up caring a 12kg backpack around decided to head towards the Gardens Point Navy Base early, which was our point of departure. My first impression of the boat was that it was a lot smaller than I was expecting. Since I was a few hours early, I spent some boring time waiting and eventually ran into Lauren who was also on the youth crew.

images: 2011-08-02-halong-bay/P1080464.jpg We got a bus from Hanoi to Halong, and were joined by some other travellers, most of which were from Australia except for 3 people from New Zealand. Our guide Viet informed us that if we were lucky we might still be able to stay the night on the bay, and that they were making some calls, but that it was up to the government as they had closed the bay to all boats as a safety precaution.

I really hated Hanoi. It was so cramped, dirty, smelly and hot. So hot in fact that Tom and I even came back to the hotel for the middle of the day to get out of the heat. Unlike the other cities we visited, we spent ages on the first day trying to find a cheap place to find some descent food. We expected it to be much like Saigon, but prices were a lot higher here.

Our next destination was to be Hue, but this time we got to take the scenic route rather than fly. First up, we were taken to the marble mountains which had a massive stone staircase to the top, at which there was various temples and Buddhist shrines. There was a massive cave which was used in the war to hide from the American troops. There was a hole in the ceiling where it had been bombed during the war.

Upon arriving in Hue, we had a quick walk around the city in the afternoon to see what there was to do, and made our way to the markets. They were rank, they really even worse than the one at Hoi An, which is saying a lot. We really couldn’t find anything interesting to see, so we booked a tour for the next day to the outlying areas, as we hadn’t planned anything and didn’t no what else there was to do.

After flying from Saigon, we arrived in Danang International Airport. It was about the size of Rockhampton airport but super dodgy looking for an ‘international’ airport. Our driver took us to Hoi An, and on the way we picked up our tour guide (that we did not know that we had paid for). Our guide recommended a place to get some suits made, so we headed there first. We went to a tailor called Blue, and got fitted for our suits.

We arrived in Saigon to see our driver out the front of the airport with a sign with our names on it, which was a bit of a luxury. However, we had barely even read the sign before he waved at us and walked off, looking back every now and then to make sure we were following. Then he pointed at the taxi pick up zone and disappeared. We were still trying to remember what he looked like when he came back with the car and we got in - it was pretty funny watching Tom trying to make small talk with the guy, as he didn’t speak any English and had no idea what we were saying.