After another 24-hour bus ride, we arrived safely in Vietnam's capital city, Hanoi. Everything is busy here. The roads are filled with people on motorbikes or scooters. On each scooter there can be anywhere from one to five persons, two being the most frequent. I have never seen traffic that was this terrible. I don't know if I have mentioned it...

First of all I must apologise for to all our frequent readers for the delays in posting the past few entries but we have had so little time in the past few days that we didn't even have time to read. I have managed to find an available 50 minutes on the train between Osaka and the airport (which we hope we will reach on time as we didn't anticip...

Good Morning Vietnam! Caught a flight from Bangkok to Hanoi and arrived just before lunch. Hanoi's centre extends out from the edges of Hoan Kiem Lake so we stayed to the north of that in the Old Quarter. Really lovely city although crossing a street for the first time was more than just a tad scary. There are so many scooters/motorbikes it is u...

We arrived into Hanoi after a 15 hour sleeper journey from Hoi An on the 30th January. In the group we had, me and Bar, Jason and Carleon, Lucy - Laura - Kate (england) and Jack and Alex (aussies). We booked into a hotel near the main backpacker area again. We arrived early enough and decided to rent out bikes for the day and tour the city. We w...

Hello all, MISS ME???? Well, it has been over 2 weeks since I last wrote and that's because there wasn't much happening relative to the first 4 weeks. I was in the UK for 2 weeks for work. It was actually great and met all my new colleagues, even the CEO (although I did not realize this until 5 min into the conversation)! The two weeks were defi...

Today at work, a very pregnant Vietnamese co-worker of mine offered me something that looked like a shriveled up part of the anatomy that is best left to the imagination. I figured, as she popped one in her mouth without flinching, that if a pregnant woman is eating it, what on God's green Earth do I have to fear! So, without thinking too much a...

I've been thinking about all the bad habits I've developed living in Ha Noi. I know I've already mentioned a few: slurping food, asking in a very repetitive manner whether or not "you understand me," leaving parties without saying goodbye to my friends, leaving my friends at parties where they don't know anyone else, leaving my own party... Oh, ...

Because of a flight delay of nearly an hour and a half, we arrived in Hanoi close to 11pm. Being budget travellers, we opted to take a minibus (3USD) instead of a taxi (10USD) into Hanoi. Little did we know that the minibus doesn't run on a schedule. Instead the driver waits until the bus is full before going. We were the second people on the bu...

Hanoi We took a soft seat, seven-hour train from Hue to Hanoi. Along the way, we saw the results of the recent typhoon. Many fields were flooded and farmers' rice paddies were under water. The scenery was varied with karst mountains, small villages and fields. There was an extensive collection of Ho Chi Minh's writings in his huge museum. Many o...

Back in Hanoi, we went out to explore the sites. Our first stop was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where, in the tradition of other communist leaders, Ho Chi Minh's body is preserved and on display. The Mausoleum itself is an impressive structure, and after some extensive security checks, waiting in line, and walking slowly, we got to take a walk th...