16/10/09 Nihn Bihn (Friday) Another rainy day in Hanoi. We collected all our luggage together for a trip to Nihn Bihn follwed by a night bus through to Hue further down south. The day trip was on the route so we were being dropped off after at a hotel to wait for the bus. A tiny bus arrived to collect us and the guide looked a bit shocked as there was nowhere to put it all. He said he knew all about our arrangements for later but we were doubtful. Most of the ba...

15/10/09 Halong Bay We woke up early to join our day tour to see Halong Bay. As Jennifer hadn't called to cancel we assumed we were goingand just after 8 the bus arrived to collect us. At breakfast our good friends the Americans had whined at us about the day trip and thought they were on the same one as us. We are pleased to report they weren't on our trip!! After about an hours driving around the town picking up all the passengers we finally headed out of Hano...

13/10/09 Perfume Pagoda We arrived back in Hanoi at 5.30am after a really awful night on the night train from Lai Cao. We were shaken around throughout the night and both had very little sleep. apparently it may have been because we had the beds over the wheels but not sure if theres anything in that. We jumped into the nearest taxi and asked for a fixed fare but he said he had a meter...one that spun round at a rapid pace!! He drove really slowly and nervously ...

9/10/09 Sapa Saturday We woke up and packed an overnight bag for a later visit to Sa Pa in the mountains near the Chinese border in North Vietnam. The towns name means town in the clouds but we were hoping for good weather so we would get great views of the terraced hills and farms. We left the rest of our luggage in the hotel as we would be back there after a couple of nights away. We strolled into town calling in at a couple of stores on the way to buy a few s...

Tuesday 6/10/9 Enroute to Vietnam We checked out of the hostel and caught the 6.15 bus to the airport. After a straight forward check in we had a couple of hours before boarding the flight south to Brisbane. Unfortunately we weren't on a direct flight and would backtrack across Australia from Brisbane to Hong Kong for a transit stop. After 1 hour waiting in Brisbane we got on our plane headed for Hong Kong. We had a nine hour flight but had fantastic views over ...