And we're in Vietnam! It all feels a little rushed, but I think we are just very efficient sight-seeers (and also trying to fit a lot into 5 weeks!)

We travelled back from Vang Vieng to Vientiane a few days ago, managing to catch the local bus from the side of the road. This one was packed, mostly with rice! The bags were filling the isles, so to reach a seat we had to climb along the top of it all! Pretty cool. We didn't want to go back to Vietiane really, but had to pick up our Vietnam visas so it was more a quick stop off on the way to the Laos Bao border, further south. Picking up the visas became a hassle in itself, mostly due to my distinct lack of any sense of direction! After trying, a failing, retrace our steps from a few days before over to the embassy we haled a tuktuk. He misunderstood, and took us to the south bus station thinking we wanted to GO to Vietnam right there and then! That was miles away, so we then ended up paying another driver 3 pounds to take us back again! Not so fun!

The bus over to Vietnam was an overnight touristy bus (or VIP, as they like to call it). We were picked up from town and taken to our bus, seemingly very striaght forward! With around 10 minutes to departure we boarded the bus and got comfy, only to be told a few minutes later that we weren't only on the wrong bus, but in the wrong bus station and the agency lady, along with 4 other tourists heading over to vietnam, had been searching for us for over half an hour! Ollie had the stressful job of searching for our bags underneath the bus, but another half hour drive and we reached ours, which thankfully hadn't left yet, and settled in for the night.

Reaching Savanaket (further south in Laos, near the border) at 5am we made a tough decision to catch the 10am bus to Hue, instead of stopping the night in Savanaket as planned. This was another tourist bus so pretty nice. The border was a long process, including a health quarantine (my temperature was 36.8, if anybody is interested) but they let us through and we arrived in Hue 8 hours later with no Vietnamese Dong to spend! We got an overpriced taxi to town with a couple of other english guys, settling on paying US dollars just to make life easier.

Our hotel here is amazing! We're paying 5 US dollars a night each, but it has a pool! Its the cheapest place in town we can find so I think we've got a good deal going on. The town has some good restaurants and bars, but its a bit touristy again in areas. It is nice to have a choice of different foods though, because I'm not sure I could stomach noodles and tofu at 10am like the locals do!

Yesterday was a major sightseeing day so pretty tiring but awesome too! We visited the old citadel in the morning, ruins of 158 houses and the forbidden city within the walls. After refreshing with some melon by the road we booked a boat tour of the musuleums a few Km down the river. There are lots of tombs of previous emporers, some complete with pretty gardens serving as holiday home to the emporers during their lifetime. The boat was owned by a family who we think lived on it, and had a very cute baby! We chugged down the river for over an hour before it dropped us on shore to find we had to pay motorbike drivers to take us the few Km to two of the tombs! So, we hopped on and feared for our lifes somewhat as we wizzed around at double the speed of the other bikes on the road! Looking back, still alive, I'll say it was pretty fun! (Oh, and mum, yes we wore helmets!) The sun was setting by the time we set off home, very pretty over the river. We met the guys again for drinks yesterday evening, learning some new drinking games and swimming in the pool at 3am - my head was not thanking me for that this morning!

We had planned to get a bus today down the HoiAn, but unfortunately they're all booked up! So we've booked for tomorrow, and have had a quiet day. After Ollie commented on the fact that we've had no real rain yet, it has tipped it down all day! We ventured out for a couple of hours only to come back looking like drowned rats. It's even more obvious who the tourists are now - somehow the locals manage to stay dry and continue daily life. Mostly using funny little rain macs covering them and their motorbikes, complete with clear plastic so the headlights can be seen! Very silly.