Loosing Personal Spacings I hadn't planned to write anything today, how eventful could a 11 hour train journey be back to to Hanoi? Our journey started at 7:30am with a hours transfer back to Loa Cai station. Many people would fit into this mini bus, which would become the theme for the rest of the day. Those little tiny plastic seats become very useful for squeezing an extra 3/4 people in. We had got our hotel to arrange our train travel back to Hanoi - we wo...

CatCat Trekking CatCat is one of the close by villages that you can get to without a guide, a good pair of feet and a couple of hours to spare. The trek takes you 250m down the slopes, we had read a lot about it being a tourist trap and constant hassle to buy things but I didn't think it was that bad. After about 1600m you reach a waterfall, we had found some advice from a previous traveller to break away from the main trail and follow the water into a meadow. T...

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...