Mutiny in Halong Bay

After searching the streets of Hanoi for a traveling agent I came across one that looked alright and booked myself in for a two-day trip with a sleep over on the boat to Halong bay.
I was picked up the following morning and it took an additional hour going around to different hotels before finally heading towards our destination.
Two hours later we stopped outside of Halong bay and were told that everyone in the buss would be divided into two groups depending if we had booked a two or a three day trip and warning bells immediately started ringing (think Spiderman's spider sense) since it's always been bad from my experience when they start breaking groups up.
Said and done, the three-day group wallowed off and us poor two-day people waited for around for an additional hour before a guy turned saying there had been an over booking and they tried to get another boat for us.
Thirty minutes later we were finally herded down to the harbor and taken onto a rickety old boat where we all dumped our bags on deck.
After being seated down and given lunch the crew walked around trying to sell us beers and that's where the trouble started. A beer was 25k Dong (Vietnamese currency) which usually cost 15K (overprice) at the hotel. When we complained about the prices the response was "No speak speak English!".
The mood didn't improve when our replacement guide (the one we originally had in the bus was good) hardly spoke any English explained that the boat didn't have enough petrol and the trip that some of us had signed up for would not take place.
Mayhem followed, furious tourists raged against the crew in attempts of trying to get trip they had purchased while the crew responded by being as rude and obnoxious as they possibly could. Thirty minutes later two camps had taken form. The tourists on upper deck, the crew on the lower one. Plans were made, strategies discussed and people were upset everywhere.
I myself sat with a beer I bought for expensive money and thought the whole situation was pretty funny since I wasn't too bothered with which island we were supposed to see or not. The main attraction, Halong Bay was all around us, the weather was nice and I had got used to being hustled in Bangkok and realized that taking it easy was the best option out.
An hour later on the boat we were taken to some fantastic limestone caves for half an hour. I bought some cheap beers from a boat lady who had docked near the caves and jumped on to enemy territory again (the boat that is). This is where more trouble came our way.
The captain of the ship pulled out a document saying that all drinks brought onboard were charged 5K for each opened bottle, which didn't go down very well with the rest of us. I myself quickly did my maths and realized that it was cheaper anyway and considered it a small but important victory, hurray!
It also turned out that two of our group had deserted and got on another boat instead without telling the rest of us, cowards.
Time passed, the evening drew to a close and it was time to check out the cabins. Mine was alright but most of the others complained of rat spilling everywhere and I knew the night would get interesting. Sitting up on deck watching the sunset people started shouting that they saw rats cruising along the sides of the boat and once again the crew vs. tourists war broke out. More guerilla tactics were used, cheap tricks played and most of the tourist army decided to sleep upstairs on deck. I had already decided that I would try to sleep in my bunk so I crept down in my sleeping cover, turned the fan on and went to sleep. Big mistake, two hours later the fan was mysteriously turned of and the cabin got hotter than Hell itself. While lying in bed considering my options I started hearing teeth against wood around me. Since I was the only one sleeping in the cabin I knew the rats were after my Swede blood but I was too tired to do anything about it.
As a test I left a chewing gum on my bedside table, tried to get to sleep and dozed of for half an hour but woke up again only to find the chewing gum gone.
It was time to waive the white flag, leave walk-over move up to the others in my platoon. Woke up a few hours later and were taken back to shore. The crew and us happily parted ways with a string of swearwords and raised middle fingers to everyone's delight.
The good coming out of it all was that I met a great Canadian couple (Andrew and Sarah) from Vancouver, which I have traveled with trough the rest of Vietnam.