Long time no blog! Combination of little internet time and difficulties trying to get this damn site to work - very tempermental! Last time I wrote we were leaving Hoi An and flew to Nhg Trang which seems to be a massive holiday destination for the Vietnamese which I can only relate to being a bit like Surfers Paradise. Gorgeous white sand beaches with heaps of highrise hotels and tourists everywhere. Needless to say - not alot of character. Great hotel - ver...

So much to write about the last couple of days. After of a few days in the madness of the Old Quarter we headed off to Halong Bay on Tuesday for the overnight stay on a traditional schooner. It was a 3.5 hour trip by minivan out to Halong City where we boarded the boat and after a devine lunch we set sail for the bay and all it's beauty. Lots of gorgeous limestone rock formations towering out of the emerald green water. In the afternoon we walked through a huge c...

After a crazy couple of days we are back in Vietnam the Old Quarter, Hanoi. Friday we caught the VIP bus from Luang Prabang to Van Vieng which was evidently a 5 hour trip but somehow turned into a very long and drawn out 7 hours through hill tribe territory. This bus had the worst toilet I have had the displeasure of using and when we stopped for lunch there was a squat toilet i.e. basically a hole in the ground. Delightful! Anyway, made it in one piece and a...

Well, what can I say! After an 8 hour flight from Melbourne to HCMC then a 2 hour internal flight from there to Hanoi I'm stoked to say I've made it to my hotel in the Old Quarter in one piece. All good on my own, only bit was the transiting from the international airport to the domestic airport at HCMC which was quite unorganised - Vietnam Airlines provided a minibus but there seemed to be alot of confusion re bags / boarding passes etc. Nothing could have pre...