Palace Hotel Hanoi

... the size of a small car to build a road. The few times I came across this I had to park my bike and watch because they wouldn’t let anyone thru. It was sort of cool to watch because some of the boulders would come flying down the mountain and crash into the river below. I am not sure if it was worth the two hours of waiting though. One of the coolest things about this whole trip was seeing the way of life of the local people. For the first 4 days I didn ...

... all.

I then came home, ate my Pho, watched Ice Age 3 and decided to put pen to paper as it would be if I didn’t have a laptop. I will write more about the schools and working life at some stage but for now am going to upload some pictures from the past few weeks with all the wonderful people I’ve been privileged to meet and some which I hope allow a greater understanding or at least visual idea of Vietnam and it’s crazy capital onto this blog.

　

... then, OPEN your eyes. If they 'open' you have successfully crossed the road. (Don't worry mum, we're fine!)

Our first full day was spent walking around the old quarter. Very interesting, but extremely noisy, hot and humid and busy, this makes it very tiring. So frequent stops at suitable watering holes was essential. In the centre of town is the lovely peaceful Hoan Kien lake, the tranquility of this lake is completely surrounded by the chaos that is ...

... those seats) but Katie watched it ( i am sure she loved it - at one point there was great intent in her viewing :) ) To be fair i think we all thought much the same. It was ok to see for a few minutes but then enough is enough.
Must say the birds laying the egg and the synchronized swimmers were my favorite!

... waters and suddenly see little neon sparks jumping off from where your hands are, it's a unique experience. The plankton absorb energy from the sun by day and at night this energy gets released when the plankton is disturbed resulting in flashes of sparkling light. You can't photograph it well, just move around in the water, watch and try and build a lasting memory of the experience. This combined with large clouds in the distant skies that lit up with ...

... get the most picturesque locations in and around the place they live in. Provided the place where we reside during our holidays has so many beautiful locations around it is destined to setup the tempo for the overall trip. Having said all this it’s not easy to describe everything in words and one has got to appreciate the efforts of Asiahotelbiz.com to ...

... tours are cheap so we ended up booking a deluxe 3 day & 2 night trip from 5th to 7th June.

We got picked up and crammed into a tiny minibus, not a good indicator of the level of comfort to be expected on our DELUXE tour. The group was of 12 people only, so we were hoping for some youngish couples and fellow backpackers we would have something in common with. WE got a 30 year old couple from Czech republic, good start, and a middle aged American ...

... have booked tours to other countries, a sharp rise from a year earlier. To date, Hanoi Redtour has closed out bookings for 35-36 tours and can accept only one or two travelers more for each of its other 10 tours (two to Malaysia and Singapore, two to Hong Kong and six to China by land). Meanwhile, Hoan said, only 500 travelers have booked domestic tours. Popular destinations include Da Nang City, Hoi An, and the ...

... dirait M. Lecavalier. Elle a réussi a convaincre Vin de nous accompagner pour les 3 jours de notre voyage a Halong. Vin parle un excellent anglais. Je me promet de l'interroger sur les us et coutumes des gens du pays (culture, éducation, santé, problèmes sociaux, etc). C'est vraiment ça qui m'intéresse! Je vous promet de mettre des photos de la gang bientot! Salut, Pat

A few weeks after returning from Mai Chau, I got an email from our friend Nicola. We knew Nicola from our previous time in Hanoi, so we went back about as far as friends in Hanoi go. Nicola was working as the Nationwide Senior Teacher for Recruitment at our school, Apollo. It seemed that the recruitment department was doing very well, so they ...