Katie: What a day... We were up ready to go at 6am. Our \'rude boy\' driver wasn\'t. Eventually he surfaced & we began our rather random & never ending day to Vietnam. After 1/2 an hour he had to stop as his own driving had made him sick... never a good sign. We then stopped a few minutes later for directions - consisted of him saying \' Vietnam\' and the local just pointing down the road. Our faith in this man was rapidly diminishing. He then proceeded to play some rather loud Loas techno music about a \'Chawawa\'. We drove into the clouds (no really, we did!) and couldn\'t even see the road, let alone the cliff edge. His response was to turn around & laugh at us. By this time he was no longer our friend. We pulled up in a dis-used mud quarry to discover that it actually was the boarder. Nobody in sight for miles. \'Uh-oh\' we thought. We went into the little hut, had our passports stamped & were pointed down the road to Vietnam (in the rain). We took that to mean walk to Vietnam, which we did. In the mud. We interrupted the customs men drinking & playing cards much to their annoyance to inspect our visas etc. Mine & Alyson\'s bags were then ordered to be searched. We must look dodgy. They screached \'YOU! Open bag!\' Scary. They had much amusing rooting through our bras, pills, underwear and asked what every single pill, lotion, cream etc was. They didn\'t speak english & proved to be a taxing job. Alyson had to act out what everything was, including immodium & condoms (yes!) - I think they did this just for entertainments sake as they called over all their buddies to take part. We then saw 2 other westerners - our knights in shining armour, who came to our rescue with a bus. Until this point, we thought we would have to wait until Tuesday for the next bus, or attempt the rest of our journey on mopeds as it was Vietnamese New Year. So we hopped on the bus & endured a 8 hour journey to Vinh... which according to the travel book, said not to go to. Oh dear. Randomly, around 12 lunch time, we pulled up next to a river & were told we were going to have lunch. We thought we might have to fish our own lunch but turned out they brought food & shared it with us... except we weren\'t keen to eat cold sticky rice, chicken head & claws, dark red bloody sausages & piranah looking fish. We just smiled & ate Julie\'s Ritz crackers. After arriving in lovely old Vinh, we followed the 2 guys who saved us to a hotel & checked in to 2 skanky rooms. We attempted to have dinner in the hotel\'s restaurant only to discover the menu consisted mainly of tortoise, porcupine, goat, dog, eel, snake amongst others, as well as heads, claws, blood, organs & general insides. We opted for bread but they had run out. Uh-oh we thought. The next morning we were up again at 6am to get the first bus out of the city before they put us on the menu. It wouldn\'t surprise me. It was the worst bus journey I have ever endured. We had our backpacks on our laps & had to witness the girl in front throw up into plastic bags & then lob them out the window like grenades (in the middle of a town, not the countryside). We also had a crying child and a driver obsessed with sounding his horn & racing other buses. We arrived in Hanoi, in the rain, only to find that the vast majority of it is shut for Vietnamese New Year. Haven\'t really done much since, apart from eat & sleep which we have lacked in the last few days. Hopefully things will get better as our adventure continues. And what an adventure it is!