Hanoi is a great place that is relatively unchanged by tourists. The old quarter with it's tall and thin colonial style buildings, narrow streets and the sound of motorcycle horns is everything we hoped it would be. People on the streets wearing conical hats selling food and bia hoi on tiny plastic chairs, and others offering key cutting, shoe cleaning, and hair cuts. The best one is the people selling around 30 live goldfish in plastic bags on the back of their ...

Hue is another UNESCO world heritage site as it was once the capital of Vietnam. It also has the best Vietnamese food we've eaten all trip! Here are a few of our favs: Make your own rice paper rolls filled with salad, starfruit, green banana and pork skewer dipped in peanut sauce called banh thit nuang. Rice flour fried pancake flavoured with turmeric filled with bean sprouts, shrimp and salad called banh khaoi. Steamed rice noodle pieces covered in dried shri...

Phong Nha-Ba National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site which thankfully remains relatively undiscovered on the backpacker trail. It is just across the DMZ (demilitarised zone) in northern Vietnam only 40km from the Laos border. It has numorous marble karsts coated in wildlife and hidden within them are some of the most amazing caves in the world. So of course it's home to the world's largest cave, discovered in 2009. However you're not allowed in that, unless y...

We took the sleeper train overnight to Hoi An. An Aussie couple we met in the station kindly let us share with them in their cabin after they saw we were going to have Vietnamese company for the night! The train was so much better than the bus, but we still didn't get much sleep! We ended up sleeping in our guesthouse most of the morning. The weather in Hoi An was the coldest we've experienced on our trip so far but it didn't matter because the town is pretty at...

Mui Ne, a beach resort full of Russians. A 5 hour sleeping bus journey north later we arrived at our guesthouse. It had a swimming pool with steps down to the beach! That day we chilled on the sunbeds watching the fisherman in the sea, some raking the sand for shellfish but most in fishing bowls/bathtubs- thats the only way to describe them! So that night we walked up the beach road to the local seafood 'restaurants' offering today's catch. They had crabs, prawns...