Salute Hotel Hanoi

... calendar), harvest festival thingamajig where children run around with lanterns and there are dragons dancing in the street to the beat of giant drums. The streets are even more chaotic than usual but Pierre has developed the gall of a Hanoiese and is crossing the streets left, right and centre, towing me behind him kicking and screaming. Haven't lost any body parts yet so am still happy.

Had a wonderful dinner tonight in a beautiful restaurant. All the tables ...

Ok, since the last time I wrote I have been travelling A LOT by bus. It started with a 4 hour journey from Vang Vieng to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. That was easy. A little hungover, but generally feeling good to get out of Vang Vieng and onto Vietnam.
I arrived in Vientiane later in the day and found myself a small, and very cheap guesthouse in the city center. I probably got what I paid for because I noticed my screen in ...

... and try to pretend to be asleep in the hope that he may move onto other prey. Finally we were allowed up and away from him (or so we thought) and the first thing we did was to each have a shower and get the train scum off us finally. Not an hour had gone by however when we got a phone call from reception 'Would you like to book the trip now?!?!'.....ARRRRRRRRGH! Right, on principle we decided to book with the other person simply for the reason that they were ...

... they tried again to get more money but we refused point blank as we had written down the price and agreed on it with them beofer we got on. However, when we reached the first town they stopped, told us to get off and wouldn't take us any further unless we gave them more money. As the Spanish girls had already paid them, we didn't have a leg to stand on, and out of principle we refused to pay more, so started walking the remaining 9km to Dien Bien Phu. Thankfully we ...

... out answers to mathematical questions. Genius. Hard to follow you might think? Who could come on after the dogs have just soaked up the applause of the crowd? I’ll tell you who; twelve monkeys riding bicycles. I got so excited when NMB told us about this i could barely control myself. And to think i’d missed out on all of this just because i was too lazy to read my Lonely Planet. But that isn’t even the best bit. The best bit is the addition of a bear on a scooter ...

... partners, but the Chinese weren't too interested in anything the Brits had to offer so the import/export balance was uneven. The Brits began exporting opium to China, grown in India. The Chinese finally had enough of that and seized the ships and dumped the opium in the harbour. The Brits attacked. The peace treaty gave England Hong Kong. All that to explain why Hong Kong was so easy to travel in. Almost everyone speaks ...

... a bit dark. We quickly took some pictures and went back down to cycle back to our hotel. On the way, Ian and Isaac's bicycle chain came off and after fixing it, we rode as fast as we could as it had started to drizzle a bit. Was another exhilarating bicycle ride we had there! We had our dinner at the hotel and the helpings were so big that there were lots of leftovers. We had fun trying to converse with 2 of the waitresses there. By ...