We left for Ha Long Bay quite early and got on to a packed mini-bus, the journey took about 3 hours with one stop. When we arrived at the dock we were told that our tour had been changed slightly, we were now going to spend our first night on Cat Ba Island rather than on the Junk boat as it was full.This was fine with us as we would just do the tour the other way round.Once on the boat we sailed out into the bay and toward the limestone pinnacles, there are appar...

We flew in to Hanoi late afternoon and got on the shuttle bus to the centre as soon as we got off we were hassled by motorbike drivers wanting to give is a lift.We started walking towards the Old Quarter aided by our guidebook to try and find somewhere to stay.The first places that we looked at were quite expensive so we carried on looking.It was dark early and it felt much later than it was so then next hotel offered us a room for $20 so we took it.It was nice a...