Most tourists travel to Cat Ba Island by a combination of bus and boat from Hanoi, but given there is a train to Haiphong and then a hydrofoil connection to the island we decided this was a good way to experience the island and the type of scenery that Halong Bay is famous for. It was another early start as we left the hotel at 05.30 along with a breakfast 'pack up' in order to catch the 06.00 train. This trip was done in hard class, although we had padded sea...

Our stop in Ninh Binh was another place we chose partly because the railway timetable worked well and because after a little bit of research we actually found there was definitely something worth seeing. So a visit to the limestone karst mountains, situated about 10km from the centre of town, seemed like it made for a great place for a two night stop after the eight hour slog from Dong Hoi. Little did we know that we would also come away over three million Vietn...

Hué sits pretty much on the old border of North and South Vietnam and we could have visited the old DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) which separated the two warring countries (or two bits of the same country that was arbitrarily split by the French in 1954). In the end we did not and settled for visiting the old royal palaces and tombs of the thirteen Kings of Vietnam that ruled between 1802 and 1945. During that time Hué acted as the capital city of Vietnam. ...

Hoi An is a UNESCO listed city. It was a major trading port many years ago and developed because of the mix of people from all over the world coming to make money. The old city has changed little with small homes, merchants houses and businesses all setting up a stone's throw from the port area. Nowadays the ships dock at the deep water port at Da Nang about 30km from Hoi An, which was where we arrived by train in order to get to the historic city. We had tw...

The distance by train between Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and Hanoi is just short of 1,100 miles and you can travel between the two cities in around 34 hours on one of five direct daily trains running on the 'Reunification Express' route. Our trip from south to north sees us stopping at Mui Ne, Quy Nhon, Hoi An, Hue, Dong Hoi and Ninh Binh before eventually arriving at Hanoi just before Christmas. Making these stops allows for us to catch 'day trains' travelling in s...