I had a great day trip to Halong bay where I felt like I was in Pirates of the Caribbean except there weren't any proper Vietnamese sailboats with cool sails. But me and Kam (from Ho Chi Minh) who I sat with rented a kayak after lunch and skilfully navigated a couple of island caves, my chinos got drenched but he water was almost warm so I didn't mind. When we got back to the boat (almost late) we had some photo ops with his girlfriend who had opted to stay be...

It's 7:42am and I have got up so that I can get my free breakfast at the Hanoi Backpackers hostel which is actually across the road from the building I slept in. We got to the hostel at midnight, 30 hours after leaving Luang Prabang. The first 6 hours were spent getting used to the sleeper bus where the cheeky locals who had obviously paid a low fee to sleep downstairs slowly moved to gaps in the upper bunk. One was constantly battling for Peter's legroom but Pet...