Travel wipeout I think the amount of travelling we have done in a few days finally took its toll. On arriving at our hotel we were feeling wiped out but the staff couldn't be anymore helpful. We were greeted with hot cinnamon tea and then breakfast. They had asked someone who was checking out to vacate the room early so we could get in and nap! Sapa itself is quite small, but it's surrounded by local minority villages that you can trek too. One local tribe the ...

B52 bombers and getting to know the locals On my last Hanoi adventure we were greeted with baffled and confused faces whilst trying to track down the downed B52 wreckage hanging out of a lake. I asked Cham about it on Tuesday and she said it was quite far away and you would have to take a motorcycle so I had knocked that idea on the head until I figured out how to get there on foot. It was at least a 40 min stroll away and seemed silly to miss the opportunity to...

Checking Into Hanoi Hilton The best way to explore Hanoi is on your feet and not by taxi (they don't know where they are going as we discovered last time around). Today we visited the Hanoi Cathedral, we assume its French build and Tash thinks it reminds her of Notre Dame, it was locked up though so we went back a good few hours later when they were having mass. I had zero clue what was happening (it was in Vietnamese) but I'm told I roughly follows the same pat...

How long is my bay?/Chuc Mung Nam Moi Ha long bay comprises of 2,000 limestone karsts in the South China sea. Ancient tales say that each karsts were originally dragons sent down from the sky's to protect the land. On my last visit many beers were drank, I was looking for something a bit more low key this time around and that's exactly what we got. Cham had got us a upgrade onto a better boat/junk, named the A Class Opera Cruise. The journey from Hanoi to the p...

Post Flight Pre Amble One advantage of returning back to a location you have already been to is that you may understand how things work. The system in Noi Bai airport to get your visa is confusing. You go to one end of a office give them your passport, photos and paperwork. They will give you back whatever they choose to at the time (we kept our forms but everyone else in the queue had handed them over and didn't get them back). You then walk to the other side o...