Day Thirty-Eight Hanoi to Ha Long Bay Boat Trip Extremely early start to the day. We had been told that we will be collected from the hostel between 7am & 7.30am so we were up at 6.30am so we could get washed & changed & sort out what we were taking for the next couple of days. We had decided that because we needed to return to Hanoi then we would pack our small rucksacks for the next couple of days & leave our big heavy backpacks at the hostel ...

Day Thirty-Seven Hanoi Pagoda, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Flag Tower & War Museum After breakfast in the hostel of lovely eggs & bread we were all set for our trip out. We had decided that we were going to spend the whole day sight seeing around the rest of Hanoi as tomorrow we had planned to go on a trip to Ha Long Bay & Cat Ba island as we have heard many nice things about these places. We invited our new German friend Richard but he said he needed to...

Day Thirty-Six St Joseph's Cathedral, Hon Lo Prison with Museum & the Temple of Literature Early morning rise ready to sample our first Vietnamese breakfast in the hostel as it was free. We had been informed by our Argentinian friend Ana that she would be arriving in Hanoi today from Nanning. Downstairs in the seating area all we could hear was Spanish talk - yipee Ana was already here!!! It was great to see her & we couldn't wait to hear the rest of h...

Day Thirty-Five Exploring Hanoi & Hoan Kiem We had a lovely relaxing sleep in our nice hotel but it was time to get up. I ran a nice hot bath so I could rest my bones whilst Andy put the football channel on again. Life seemed too good here, it was great. With us getting up quite late we had missed the free breakfast at the hotel which was a shame. We had to repack our bags so that we could go to the reception downtairs & move to the hostel which we had ...

Day Thirty-FourVietnam Here We ComeEarly start for Andy as he hadn't done any packing whatsoever, I pretty pleased with myself that I managed to do it all last night as there was no way two of us could be moving around & trying to pack at the same time in our small room. Lovely English cornflakes for breakfast & the milk wasn't to bad either. I lay on the bed fiddling around with our lovely new laptop & watching Andy move around in the tiny space. A b...