After our three day trip and the copious amounts of alcohol that were supped by everyone, you would think that the evening meal before we all went our separate ways last night would be fairly straightforward? One thing we have learned from Vietnam...nothing is straightforward! After three days straight of rice, omelette, fish and water spinach for lunch and dinner, it was time for something a little closer to home. Pizza! We all met up at a lovely restaurant ri...

The day after we arrived in Hanoi we set off on a three day, two night trip to Hal Long Bay and Cat Ba Island. We woke up nice and early again as our tour guide was supposed to be picking us up from our hotel between 7.30 and 8am. Being in Vietnam we should have known better than to actually expect that this is when he would arrive! 7am he was at the door so after a mad rush we were ready for a bus trip to our boat. We arrived at the boat and were all split up i...

We arrived in Hanoi after a fourteen hour night bus trip from Hue and the last thing we needed was people pecking our heads and all claiming that they were from Sinh Cafe and the person next to them was lying. So what do you think we got?? We went with one of them as it was a free ride into town, but then when we got a taxi from their dodgy little hotel, the driver didn't speak a word of English and just followed his mate on a bike around while he tried to get us...

We are now in Hue and my God is it hot - 39 degrees!! We arrived at about 6pm on Tuesday evening. Just in time for a shower and some grub! Hue is a funny old place! It used to be the capital of Vietnam many years ago but yet there doesn't seem to be any real centre to it. There is the Imperial city which is where the emperor used to live with his crew until it got bombed in 1945, outside of it is the Citadel where the ordinary people lived at that time (they hav...

We finally reached Hoi An after a twelve hour night bus trip, and once again it is so different from the last city we were in. There is a really strong Japanese influence here in the architecture and everything is very compact. Much of Hoi An is based around the old town, and one of the biggest markets.... EVER!! It's huge!! Well, it seems that way when you're fighting for space with the stall owners, customers and random maniacs on motorbikes who seem to like t...