Helloooo, it's Akon typing now!

We're in Hanoi at the moment, the capital of Vietnam. Just had an amazing week here that involved visiting Halong Bay and Sapa (a hill tribe village in Northern Vietnam).

Our journey to Hanoi was an experience in itself. After a day of being scammed and kidnapped in Hue (a town en route to Hanoi) by cyclo drivers (literally- we asked for an hours trip, it lasted about 5 hrs despite numerous requests to go back ending with an inevitable overcharge at the end) we were excited to board our first sleeper train. Perhaps a little naively, we were expecting it to be our first luxurious transport experience. This was not the case. It was rank. Should have seen Staff's face, for the first hr she sat on a tiny square of material with her feet off the ground and refused to touch the sheets. We finally decided to man up and get on with it, got into bed, when Staff spotted a MASSIVE (actually quite small) mouse run from underneath Whitfords bed. Cue another hrs not sleeping and not touching anything.

You can imagine our relief when we arrived in Hanoi and found a luxury hotel for $6 a night (luxury being clean sheets, warm water and mouse free). We felt we needed a strong drink that evening so headed out at 5 (12pm curfew in Hanoi means heading out earlier!). This turned into an eventful night that involved a lock in at some irish pub, Staff being chatted up by a hot ozzy guy... who turned out to be an evangelical christian desperate to convert her. As you can imagine, he'd met his match and what was supposed to be a converting session for her ended up with him questioning his own faith! Anyway, a few games of pool, jenga and drinks later, Staff and I were left biting off all of our newly grown nails as Whitford disappeared off on the back of a scooter with a fit kiwi bar manager (Becky sandwiched in the middle of her Kiwi and the Vietnamese scooter driver who looked particularly uncomfortable)...

Next day we headed for a 3 day trip to Halong Bay. It was AWESOME!!! First day involved getting to our boat (which was v v nice) and meeting the other people on the boat (4 Norwegians and an old Vietnamese guy), then doing a bit of sunbathing, caving and kayaking. Pretty hard day that ended with us all jumping off the boat before dinner being served and then playing a few games of ring of fire with the Norwegians which broke the ice pretty well (we even did the conga around the boat a few times, boat staff included). The old Vietnamese guy took a bit of a fancy to Heather, which we realised when Becky borrowed his camera he seemed to have taken numerous sly pics of her throughout the day. She was a little bit concerned that she had her own room that night and that he might come knocking. Day 2 involved visiting Cat Ba island and began wirth some strenous trekking up a mountain. Can only hope that we will get a bit fitter before Macchu Pichu. We then visited Monkey Island in the afternoon... was slightly more eventful than we had anticipated. Firstly, Staff fell over on the little row boat there and took down a 6ft 6" Brummy. Don't know who was more embarrassed- him, her or us. His mate found it hilarious though! After being warned by another girl ('negative girl') not to go as 2 people on her trip got bitten by monkeys, we were a bit wary of catching rabies. There were quite a few monkeys on the beach that we were trying to keep our distance from. Weirdly, they seemed to be following us around the beach more than anyone else on our boat. Suddenly I heard Staff shout 'Riggers... catch!!'. I turned around to see her throw a banana at me which she'd realised was sticking out of her bag... hence the monkey attention... Next thing I know, 3 hungry, angry monkeys were charging towards me. I've never run so fast in my life. Everyone else from the boat were pissing themselves! We then went for another little trek and ended up having a game of volleyball and then got lost trying to get back. We ended up scaling some rocks and when me and Becky couldnt get down, the 6ft 6" knight in shining armour lent us his shoulders (bet he regretted it later!). After being half an hour late for the boat back, we were greeted back with some stoney faces. As they were all staring at us, it got too much for me and I fell in the sea. I had to get on the boat soaking wet and Becky had to get on with a massive rip in her shorts from the rocks.

That night we met up with the brummy guys and our norwegian mates and went to a skybar on the 8th floor of some hotel. Although we were the only ones there we partied the night away involving rave paint, table football, our own choice of tunes and 2 4 1 vodkas included in the happy hr that seemed to last all night.

We then headed back to Hanoi for a day before going on a 2 day trip to Sapa, a little village up in the hills of Northern Vietnam. We were picked up by a bus to see a man inside frantically waving at us, beside himself with glee. It was only Heather's little Vietnamese fan!! It was all funny... until we literally had to force him out of our carriage on the sleeper train! We had a couple of days trekking and visiting the hill tribes in the area (we discovered muscles we never realised we had) and then another brummy that we met there insisted that we go out for a few 'bezzles' that night. A few turned into a few litres of vodka and being educated in numerous drinking games where I discovered that I could not tell the difference between my left and right.

Tonight we head to Laos (20hr bus trip) for more adventures!!

And this is the link to all staff's photos on flickr- (still struggling to upload anything on fb!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47719876@N04/