Sinh Cafe Hotel Hanoi

... every thing from hotel discounts to guided tours, marriage to eligible sisters or cousins, or" keys to the city". As usual,we had to tell them, "no thanks,as we had already booked," but this still seemed not to make much difference, as they were also persistent, right up until the time we loaded up the waiting four wheel drive. We threw our packs into the rear tray of the Range Rover and climbed aboard and then were finally on our ...

... again. To say I got some mean glances by the women at our table would be silly. He smiles, fills our glasses, toasts and there it goes again. Now he's persuaded by one of the girls at our table to give some of his attention and "love" to a nearby table. I'm siting on the end of our table close enough to the table that "crazy uncle" has moved to so he includes me. I think he's taken me under his wing as an "apprentice crazy uncle". Fill with beer first, toast, slam ...

... for the camera but realised you could of got away without paying as no-one seemed to question us.
There is a lot of information about the french war, with many machinery and equipment
used during the war time. It is very hard to understand what happened as only selected descriptions are in English. We watched a film for 20 minutes and still didn't full understand the sequence of events. It doesn't help that the different information and detail ...

Hi Guys

Arrived in Hanoi on an Air France flight from Bangkok today. It was very strange getting a 'Bonjour!' in Bangkok! We were just in the air when we remembered that Air France have a bit of a bad track record these days but the flight was uneventful, thank god!

Our first day in Hanoi we went to visit the Military Museum. They have exhibits here of a lot of ...

... restaurant which had the added bonus of a screaming child...yay. Seriously though, is hot humid, hygenically questionable Vietnam the worst place to holiday with a small baby? Why on earth would you do that to yourself and others!

We woke early in the morning to catch the minibus. Not early enough though as the guy came about 20min early and sat angrily beeping the horn of the bus until we came out. He seemed initially quite a nice guy, if a little eerily ...

... villages, and people would either look at us as if we were crazy, or smile, laugh and shout 'hello how are yooooooo?' We enjoyed our first proper meal in days that night and actually went to bed with full tummies.

Next morning involved another moto taxi ride to the bus station, being ripped off for our bus tickets, using our phrasebook to explain that if we wanted to pay tourist 'tax' we would go on a tourist bus, not a local bus. I have to say that we have had some ...

... in a tutu and left it at that. Too often we learn too late...

After all the suit buying in Hoi An, Ben and I moved onto Hue to the North (pronounced like ‘Howay the lads!’ in a geordie accent) and we spent a nice day touring round the city and it’s perfume river. We also spent a bit of time in the citadel which had a citadel within a citadel within a citadel. That’s a lot of citadels. And i’m not even one hundred per cent sure what a citadel is. We ...

... we ventured out. Reid scored a pair of Nike sandals from a street corner, we were assured that Nike would receive their cut. Then we went to a water puppetry show, common only to northern Vietnam. We all loved it! Those YVR wishing well coins apparently did their trick as while waiting to enter the show we ran into a Nanaimo family who have been living and travelling in Vietnam (the Burnleys). Carolyn had been in touch ...

... 30pm. The journey, we were told, would take about 40 minutes. However, due to a massive jam leading to the church, it took us about one hour fifteen minutes to reach the place. It was almost midnite by the time we reached there and we only managed to catch the tail of a street procession which was very colourful and rather interesting. It was interesting in that a small statue of Jesus as a child was carried on an altar during the ...