Tung Trang Hotel Hanoi

Tom, Mark, and I were both heading north so we booked a flight to Hanoi together. The flight was in the evening so we still had some time in Hoi An. I rented a moto and drove around town while Mark and Tom walked around a bit. Tom and I met up at the tailor and picked up our suits. We met this Australian Asian named Trent at the tailor who was on our same flight. We finished just in time to catch a taxi to the airport.

I was excited to head north because I've heard that's where the be...

Hanoi is one of the craziest cities we have ever been to, not as bad as Cairo, but just as many people. There are more mopeds in this city than I thought there were on Earth. So trying to get from one destination to the other in this city is like playing the game Frogger, except we are the frog and there are no lily pads or logs to jump on, so you're pretty much screwed. The prices here cannot be beat though! We thought things were cheap in Thailand, but here it is ridiculously inexpensive. ...

Well we have arrived in 'scam' city. Yes apparently its the worst city for scam artists in the whole world. Needless to say we avoided the first one by pre-booking (the transfer from airport to hotel) our own taxi directly with the hotel (that we previously booked too) that some fellow travellers had recommended. Otherwise the 'taxi mafia' will end up taking you to a totally different hotel insisting that the one you want is 'full' or 'no longer there', they have all the excuses. Then apparen...

We arrived in Hanoi a bit wiery early in the morning and was dropped off nowhere near the centre of town because the roads aren't big enough to accommodate a coach. We ended up getting in a taxi that took us to The Bluestar Hotel in return for a free journey, which ended up being 300,000 Dong! If we didn't take a room at the hotel we would have had to pay the cab fare so we opted to stay one night in their below average ten dollar room, they still made us pay $2 for the cab journey because we...

right, so we're now in vietnam, which is great, all but for this wee blog! on a positive note, our hotel, despite costing a little more than we were wanting to pay, does have free internet, so while sean's in the bathroom and the majority of the rest of the place are behaving like sensible adults, getting out of bed at 7 to make a proper day of it, i will spend an hour or so cracking on with this, in the now very vain attempt of getting even close to up-to-date! monday 06 october ok so this m...

tues 07 oct contd. so we arrive in luang prabang at 6.30am, eight hours after we first loaded ourselves onto the death wagon, and after watching plenty of tourists snapping away at the monks, from the safety - wrong word - of our minibus - which just happened to be higher than the monks, which according to the people of laos, being taller than them is highly offensive - we find ourselves on the banks of the mekong river, looking for a guesthouse. after several dingy places, which we had to tu...

thursday 09 october this morning sean's alarm goes off just before 6am. oh yes, i'm going monk spotting. after the other morning, arriving into luang prabang and watching the troops of monks, walking the streets, collecting alms - or gifts of food - from the locals, i finally decided that i would drag my heavy ass out of bed to go see them in action. out of bed, pee, throw clothes on, and i'm down the street with the other laos folk, all early risers, all already up and about. and it's nice. ...