Hello!!! Moto-bike?!?

That would be the most common sentence spoken to us in Vietnam.... Well that and "you buy from me please"

But I guess we should tell you about our entire trip to Vietnam, its a really funny story!!!

Our departure from China was quite an adventure, even though we spent almost 12 hours on a public bus, okay the real adventure did not start untill we reached the boarder crossing between China and Vietnam.

They checked our pasports the first time about 10 km from the actual bordercrossing, and since it was dark, it was really hard to distinguish one pasport from another when we got them back. So when we finally arrived at the Chinese border, I went from China to No-mans-land with Trines pasport in my hand, and Trine went with mine. We look NOTHING alike, but still the customs officers smiled and stamped our pasports. If this had happened back home, we would have been shot or something, because we were using "fake" pasports!! Anyways upon entering no-mans-land we were all asked to take out all our books, and a Chinese official confiscated all the Lonely Planet editions that had Taiwan in a different colour than China... It was odd, and the guy told us they had 100 of copies just lying in their offices, because they did not know what to do with them.

Once most of us were in no-mans-land, we found out that 4 people in our group either had incorect entry dates on their visas, or simply a not valid visa for Vietnam, so we had to leave them in China for an extra day, while they got their visas fixed, but it was sad, and Frank said that he nearly cried when he left them. Our very reduced group continued our trek towards the Vietnamese border, where Frank had to bribe the officials in order to be let into Vietnam... That was really odd and a bit scary, because who do you turn to if even the officials are corrupt? But its all part of the experience!!

From the border we went to a small town in the mountains known as Sapa. It is supposed to be a really beautiful city with magnificent views, but when we were there it was so foggy that you could not even see what was across the road. Honestly, it was mad, especcially when we had to drive through it in cabs.

Anyway, while in Sapa we embarked on yet another two days of trekking, and let me tell you, ham and cheese does not always a good sandwich make!!! No we havent gone crazy or anything, but our local guides name was Ham (nej carl Hamburgerjoken er meget gammel og brugt og ikke saerlig opfindsom) and he is one of the most sleesy and cheesy persons we have ever met... It was horrible, we all just wanted to push him over the edge of the mountain! He just kept calling all the girls honey and baby, and telling us he would dream about us and IIIeew thouching you, not really inaproprietly but still, he was just to much!!

The trekking however was amazing... Kinda x-treem. It was a really muddy track we had to follow, and sometimes the trail wasnt more that 15-20 cm wide. But we had some really amazing local guides to help us. Okay they were mostly children between 7 and 15 from the local H,mong tribe, but they were amazing, they just jumped around the muddy track in their rubberboots, never slipping or sliding. Tuzes guide was only twelve and about half her size, but she still managed to pull her up, and keep her from sliding down the side of the mountain.

In the evening we had another homestay with a very friendly Vietnamese family, they had the cutest little boy who ran around and played with all our stuff, and "read" our books. But unfourtunatly they also had ricevine and a karaoke machine, that Ham took posession of.... We shiver just thinking about it!!!

The next day we had a short two hour trek back to the mainroad, and we went through some very poor villages, filled with the kind of dirty barefoot children, that will appear on your tv screens shortly. But they all looked happy and some of them fell in love with Darth, and ended up following him for about 1 km, but we did not let him keep the children, even though they were super cute.

From Sapa we went on to Hanoi, and oh my god! We have never seen that many scooters in one place, there are scooters freaking everywhere. You cant even walk on the sidewalk, because it is filled with parked scooters!!

Something very sad happend in Hanoi, we had our last meal together with Frank and our Swedes! It was so sad and we mis them, especially Frank a lot, he was the best leader ever... And our new leader is a bit odd, a quack actually. The Day after we said goodbye toFrank, we ventured out into the streets of Hanoi together with the Irish girls (oh and all the people we left by the border were returned to us in Sapa! Yay). We decided to go se the Hanoi Hilton, and old prison, that was used for downed american pilots during the Vietnam war. It was quite interesting to see, but from the different exibitions in the prison it was fairly obvious that we were in a communist country. That evening we had our first groupmeeting with our new leader, and we met two new people who were joining us, again both were girls... We really need some more men, but hey the new girls are great fun,and i guess youcant have everything.

The next day we left Hanoi for Halong Bay. On the way to the bay we stopped at a center for people who had been born disabeled because of the use of Agent Orange during the war. It was a nice enough place, but we really only got to see a huge shop, where they sold stuff that people at the center manufactured.

When we arrived at the bay we went on a boattrip, and our trip ended on Cat Ba island, where we spent the next day sunbathing and relaxing on a nice sunny beach... It was grand! The day after we went back toHanoi, where we spent another day shopping, before we went on to Hue.

The first day in Hue we went to see the Citadel, and the Imperial city, it was allright, but most of the Citadel had been reconstructed during the last couple of years. The day After we went on the most amazing motorbike tour around Hue. We got up in the morning, and simply went outside and picked a driver for the day, and then we just drove around for hours. Hue had recently had some heavy rainfalls, so a lot of the countryside was floded, not that the locals minded, they were used to it! On the trip we stopped at a one-armed hatmakers place, an old tomb, and some american bunkers. We had lunch at a monestairy that doubeled as a sort of orphanige. Really poor people could take their children there and they would be educated and live there untill they were 16, then they had to decide wether they wanted to move, or stay and become monks.

The next day we went by bus to Hoi An, where we are right now. We havent really been doing much, because Tuz was feeling a bit under the weather, nothing major though. We have spent our days shopping and relaxing... And eating rice... and bread! It has been quite nice,but tomorrow we continue on to Nha Trang.