Budget Hanoi

... in an attempt to wake ourselves up and gain an appetite. This lake has great people watching, the morning is tai chi and the evening holds group aerobics, very entertaining. We ended up at restaurant 69 for dinner, wow, another amazing meal. Beef with honey and ginger really made up for the crab and corn soup that tasted just like sea water. Home to bed as we head out to Halong Bay early morning where we'll be set up on a junk (boat) for three days.

Arrived in Hanoi at 5.30am.  Vietnamese trains very good, but very cramped, 6 berths to a cabin, but very tiny - OK for the tiny Vietnamese, but not so comfortable for us Europeans!!!  Straight to the hotel for a sleep and then an orientation walk at midday.  Very buzzy town with LOADS of fumes from the endless cars and more than enough bikes and scooters - all seemingly aiming at each other, but always missing!!!  We visited the Hanoi Hilton - very ...

Tuesday 20th October - Hanoi

Bleary eyed we were kicked off the bus on the outskirts of Hanoi Old Town. A tout came up to us and offered a hotel for a reasonable price which we accepted. Once we got to the place we were ushered into the back room under the main staircase that was a bit damp and had no natural light. Too tired to do anything about it we decided to sleep first and find somewhere better later in the day. On the streets later in the morning we were suprised at ...

... it to him on the table, hidden under her hand. Without looking down he takes it from her and slides it under my papers. He then says a few more things and hands me a paper to write out what amounts to a release of my wrongdoing and that I wont come back to the police or the other guy with any other claims and has me sign off that my fine was 380,000 dong.

He keeps my passport copy (thank goodness I’d made a few extra copies this week) and takes us down to get ...

... sur le premier!

Comment reagir quand un chevalier masque arme de son plus beau destrier nous fonce dessus sans un zigzag d'hesitation, nous 'tuc-tucant' de passer plus vite notre chemin? Un pas en arriere? Un pas en avant? La statue immobile? Mais que choisir? Quel que soit le look du chevalier pret a harponner, la meilleure option est probablement d'entrer dans la danse et de continuer notre route, vaille que vaille, comme su le ballet etait fait pour que les apparitions ...

... the mountains which was bloody awesome and i found the best driving road ever that wound trough some hills and mountains so was bombing it at around 80!! Dalat was very quite in terms of nobody around so went out one night but we were the only two people in the bar!! Anyway moved on to nha trang after dalat and bumped into a french girl and kiwi girl, both working in sydney and both very good fun. the journey ...

... I was not fully prepared to complete my blog as I would have liked.
Our Guide Vung and Driver Zoung in Sapa could not have done more for us. Mr Tom from Trails of Mountain has done everything within his power to make our stay in Vietnam memorable.
The guides and drivers from Yunnan Travel in china have been exceptional. Especially Sarah ...

... And not just one or two, 3 deep all along the pavement. It’s no wonder there are bag snatches here!! Then there’s the noise. It’s a constant symphony of hooters going beep beep beep. The driver on one of our tours later told us, that if you no beep beep, you no go, and it seems that is the one part of moped school everyone listened to. Having said all of that, everyone seems to gel into one and the trust between all of them is immense. We only saw 6 or 7 minor ...

... to find no toilet roll, stagnant water all in the shed and an army of bugs voyeuristically watching me, waiting for some white flesh to show itself.

When I came back, the other two Westerners who were on the bus (2 girls, cannae remember their names) came over and we got talking for another half an hour. At last the bus started up again, and we were "Oi'd" to get on, like it was us that was holding them up! We were a bit worried as the border closed at 4pm ...

... a bit of a double take thinking I was seeing a young leopard or similar, Dave thinks it was a Civet but we're not sure, it was a stunning cat with the most beautiful markings. We think it was there to be photographed by tourists for money, so we didn't. What a terrible shame that it should end up like that. On arrival in Mai Chau, which is in an absolutely beautiful location, surrounded by hills, we were met by several touts at the ...