We arrived in Hanoi very early in the morning after our night train from Lao Cai.  Being as how we weren't exactly sure where we were, we decided to take a taxi for the couple kilometers to our chosen hotel.  Our guidebook suggested we take one of the companies it recommended, but we couldn't find any of these.  So we picked the o...

We arrived in Hanoi and brought the sun with us. We had heard many complaints from fellow travelers about the freezing cold weather in Hanoi, but we must have been so lucky that we had the best Spring weather during our entire stay. Hanoi is a charming city and we liked it more than Saigon; great food, great street markets and nice historic dist...

For my birthday meal we decided to hit up a Bia Hoi, which is a men's club that serves cheap beer and some pretty tasty food. They're all over Vietnam and are used as meeting spots for the men in the area. The menu is entirely in Vietnamese so I had no clue what exactly I was ordering except it had pork. It turned out to be a pretty tasty dish. ...

Well, It has been almost two weeks since I left Sweden, and the frustrations are continuing. I am still in Hanoi waiting for a meeting in Hai Phong. I have, however, met with the people who are helping me in Hanoi and they are doing their best to get things rolling. In the meantime I am spending my time trying to learn some more of the lang...

Day 6: Hanoi - Vietnam We get woken up at 9 am to have breakfast together and clean up most of the mess caused by yesterday's party. Thankfully there's quite a few of us, so it's done pretty quickly. After a while everyone goes their separate ways and we go back to the airport to catch our flight to Vietnam. We're pretty early again, but with no...

Everyone should come to Hanoi. This is a great city. You can experience pretty much anything here from 10p beer in the street bars - it's an institution called Bia Hoi, local beer served on the street from kegs to plastic chairs and tables that wouldn't be out of place in the local primary school - to upmarket restaurants and jazz clubs - the on...

Well, I've been here for 4 and a half days now and while the weather is cooler than KL, it's definitely just as humid.  We're currently into warm spring weather here in Hanoi, and similar to Hong Kong where I'd been living for the past 6.5 years, Hanoi has wet walls and dampness in the homes.  Apart from that, it's been great chilling ...

Ellen and I were sitting at the computer in our hotel lobby in Hanoi's old quarter trying to plan our time in Fiji when Mahn, the hotel owner approached. "You hear 'bout Saddam Hussein?" he asked in badly broken English. "Yes" I replied as Ellen continued to type. "America kill many our people." he then said. Ellen stopped typing. We both looked...

Every body known HALONG Bay:3000 islands in the guff of Tonkin, one of the natural marvels with little beaches and caves created by waves. I buy some fruit (see pic) Another interesting trip is a short river trip on the Mékong river To see: HANOI CITY: his museum of ethnology the Ho chi minh Mausoleum the temple of literature the water puppet th...

A bizar day, it was our Ho Chi Minh day. We started by going to the Ho Chin Minh Mausolaeum, a weird experience. We came to the Mausolaeum quite early and lined up in the quite long que, then our guide told us that this was the short que, the que for foreigners...hmm, special treatment for foreigners...But after an hour or so in the rain we got ...