After Hoi An, we travelled up to Hue, an old imperial city. It was nice to look round the old citadel and palace, and the royal tombs scatttered around the outside. We tried to hire bikes to see the tombs, but after seeing one it starting chucking it down so we abandoned mission and ended up in a random cafe in a small village, with plastic chairs and lots of locals drinking tea and eating pho. After tea and Pho of our own, with chickens running around our feet (I think we were eating their cousin at the time), we headed back to Hue for some well deserved beers. Hue has a lot of local breweries so we sampled them all, but all were a bit strange tasting so we reverted back to the safe Saigon and Hanoi beers.

It was a good opportunity to recharge after our poisioning in Nha Trang, butter a few days of sightseeing we were ready to move on. We headed straight for Hanoi with a quick stop off in Ning Binh. The plan was to do the Trang An grottoes in Ning Binh, but again it was chucking it down soo the prospect of spending 3 hrs in a small boat with no roof wasn't very appealing. We oborted and headed for Hanoi on the public bus, which meant I was sat in a mini bus on a fold out stool in the isle as they had run out of seats. Laura had a girl puking next to her, so on the whole it wasn't the most memorable journey.

We got to Hanoi and spent a few days exploring the city, taking in the vibe. It didn't take long for me realise that I really liked the place, it felt very different to the rest of Vietnam. Up to this point, while Vietnam had been beautiful and a lot of fun, it had been hard work. The reason for this was the constant hassling by touts wanting to rip you off at every opportunity, the constant attempted overcharging by bars and restaurants, and the constant 'where you go today, you want a tour?' questions by hotel staff each morning. It had stopped us from being able to completely switch off, as we were always on our guard. Hanoi was the first place where we had really felt relaxed and were able to unwind.

The old quarter is amazing, just like Soho but much cheaper for drink. We discovered Bia Hoi, a locally brewed beer that is probably the cheapest in the world. The concept is brilliant, a guy rocks up with his keg of Bia Hoi, puts out some plastic chairs on the street, and sells you ice cold beer at 4,000 Dong a glass, about 12p. Amazing.

After a few days of kickig back and drinking, we got the night train to Sapa. Sapa was beautiful, a really incredible mountain landscape full of terraced rice paddies and small tibes of people that had came to the land from China around 500 yrs ago. As we started our first trek, some of the tribes women followed us for the full 8km just to try to sell us some of their handmade tribal gear. I guess their job has developed from working the fields over recent years. Some of them got pretty agressive about it which did take the shine off the whole experiance.

On the first day the whole town was covered in fog, which was an amazing sight in itself. As we climbed higher above the fog, we could see the taller buildings sticking out abouve the fog on the hillsides. I thought that was a great sight until I saw the valley without any fog the next day, which was breathtaking. We did a shorter trek that day, and headed back to Hanoi to make our way to Halong bay, which was one of the things I had been looking forward to the most on this whole trip.

We got on the chinese Junk boat for our overight stay on the bay and tucked into some pretty nice seafood. The scenery was fantastic, huge limestane cliffs jutting out all over the place, and huge birds flying overhead. There was a group of aussies on our boat who had been to Cambodia and had gone to the shooting range in Phnom Peng. One of them had parted with 300USD to fire a rocket, and was still made up about it. When I return to that country with a bigger budget, that is first on my list. They've got their eye on firing a tank next time. That's got to be the best shooting range in existence!

That night we thought we had the owrst room as we were right next to a whirring generator, but it turned out to be the best as it meant we couldn't hear the rats scurring around the boat all night. Happy days.

The next day we went onto Cat Ba island and spent the night. It was great to actually get on one of the many islands we went past, and go trekking in the jungle. There were also some amazing floating villages, and some really agressive monkeys that attacked us when they ran out of biscuits. Two people I met needed rabies jabs, and I was a few inches from needing one myself. The next day we had another senic cruise through the cliffs, and back to Hanoi.

I had really high expectations of Halong bay, and the landscape didn't disappiont. It was just a shame I had to battle with our guide constantly as he tried to rip us off at every opportunity, and generally make our experiance as unpleasant as possible. We left felling how we had about most things in Vietnam, amazing country, shame about how they treat you.

It seems that tourism has exploded so quickly in Vietnam the people havn't had a chance to really figure out how they are going to go about developing it, so for now they are just trying to get as much money out of people as they can, with no care for whether you come back. I hate to say it as I was looking forward to Vietnam so much, but despite how stunning the country is and as good I time I had there, I won't be back as it's just too much hard work trying to avoid the constant scams. After another pleasant day in Hanoi we flew back to Bangkok, where it was great to be greeted with a smile and begin to really relax again. Now I understand why people keep going back to Thailand year after year.