Today marked the final of the Southeast Asia Graduate Conference Masterchef Vietnam special. We are still waiting for the votes to be counted but from my own biased opinion I think I had the competition covered. If my skills in making traditional spring rolls weren't enough my masterfully crafted a rose out of a tomato skin was almost flawless. We each made a sauteed Beef sauteed in black pepper sauce and the Fish simmered in fish sauce was a combined effort...

"Up and early because we don't want to miss the start of the cooking class this morning at 8am!!!! Ahhh wait, they didn't organise it because we weren't here to pay a deposit yesterday..."That was how this morning went for the adventurous group. After some waiting around and bit of a chat it was organised that the cooking class we had arranged to be booked for today, would be taken tomorrow. As well as being a bit of a let down, it also opened up our whole day an...

After a night of attempted rowdiness we woke up to the beautful surrounds of Halong Bay and enjoyed our first normal breakfast for the week. Consisting of toast, bacon and eggs, most of us were able to enjoy what was on offer, except for Karina "Tequila Sunrise" Voss who managed to be the first up, and also the first back to bed after becoming increasingly seedy. First item on the list today was to get off the Junk we were on and have a paddle through a cave/tun...

No good trip is complete without a big fuss at the start (At least with the McCosker family holidays, it usually gives us something to laugh about later though, here it's just an unrelentless stream of ribbing). This morning it was a mixture of phones going flat during the night so the alarm didn't go off, and an anonymous person using the last of the toilet paper so when the last person to use it in the morning ran out after about 4 squares. An awkward start to ...

We all got up bright and early this morning raring to go to Halong bay only to spend the next half hour trying to figure out where we were meant to be. The language thing makes it a little bit hard to organize anything. We spent half hour sorting out what we were supposed to be doing. Halong bay has been postponed until tomorrow and we got to do the Hanoi city tour today. The city tour was good to see, but I think we are all fairly much over temples and museu...