Hoi An It’s safe to say that the much anticipated Hoi An lived up to our expectations. The hostel was the best we had stayed in. Large pool area and normal beds in the dormitories was luxury in backpacking terms. The old town itself was based along the river with a beautiful bridge linking the two rows of restaurants/shops. There are some really nice boutiquey shop and nothing like the amount of touristy crap being sold all over Hanoi. There were also many roo...

Phong Nha We got up early and went on a run. The town was quite basic, with huts and small shops running parallel to the river. We ran along the road mainly, but stopped occasionally to get some good views of the river and mountains in the backdrop. We had one day to cover everything we wanted to see in Phong Nha. We sought advice online, asked other travellers we knew what they had done and went to the cave tours talk from the hostel. We hired ‘easy riders...

Internal flight: Hanoi ➡️ Dong Hoi I think the experience of internally flying in Vietnam sums up Vietnamese travel systems quite well. Before even getting to the airport - flight time changes In the week leading up to the flight we got several emails indicating time changes for our flight to about an hour prior to the original time. Firstly - Queuing In typical English style we started queuing in the longest most immediate queue we came across at the a...

Hanoi 3 One of my favourite things about travelling is when you click instantly with people you meet. We met a group of English travellers in our room and they had lots in common with us. Similar unis/age and had mutual friends. They were planning to live in melbourne after their travels so of course I got babbling away to them about my experience there. Emma, will and Ferg were an interesting group travelling together. Will was uber laid back and was often out ...

Mai Chau The bus ride was typical of that in Vietnam. The bus driver seemed to spend most of the time on the wrong side of the road overtaking vehicles. I realised that by watching the driver weave in and out I was making myself unnecessarily stressed. It was better to try and sleep and presume we would make it there ok rather than watch the many near misses of hitting other vehicles. As we got nearer, the scenery drastically changed. We were driving along the ...