After a good night's sleep I woke to find Lanny, baby Ashleigh, and the 'helper' returning from an early morning swim: lovely to feel inadequate in the first five minutes of your day, it really adds a spring to your step. I had a delicious, but not conducive to my rowing return, croissants, banana, and custard apple breakfast with Lanny and Ashleigh: they'd been to the bakery too! Custard apple was a strange new taste: Tuan said, after waking up ten minutes befor...

The lights in the cabin were whacked on at 5am to make sure we were all awake, and we were off the train by 5.15am. I spotted a girl I'd seen on the night train up to Sapa getting off and asked her if she wanted to get a taxi into town, as she pointed to her hotel as being on the same side as the hostel I was trying to get to. A few taxis wouldn't take us, but eventually someone agreed and we piled in. He took us the scenic route past the lake, and then past the ...

I think an electric blanket is set to be a future investment - I slept so well! I couldn't even stay up to watch Confessions of a Shopaholic it was so cosy! The room outside of the blankets was not so cosy, and I quickly dressed to avoid the cold. I met Nat for breakfast at 8am, again managing to get out of my room without distress. We had scrambled egg and baguettes with some banana and passion fruit - yum. I donned my wellies for the second day, hoping they'd...

Never say never! The Sapa tour couldn't have started any worse; I was ready and waiting at the hotel at 7pm, but after both 8pm and then 9pm passed I was worried. The staff tried calling the office to no avail, and after sitting with them as they picked their noses and explored their hair for foreign bodies I was getting a little fed up of their company. They finally got through to some sort of tour guide at 9.15, when a woman shouted in very bad English to get ...

Well an eventful two days in Halong Bay were had - off to a bad start when the bus due at 7.30am arrived at 8.40. Great. The little man who picked me up failed to apologise for his timing, and didn't even hold the door as I struggled with my bags. I sat down on one of the aisle seats on an already packed bus, and was promptly told to 'move back, more people', to which I replied I would when the bus wasn't moving around and I could stand without instantly falling ...