After a bit of a disappointing trip to Halong Bay we were back in Hanoi hoping for a more enjoyable experience. It didn't start well, with our pre-booked hotel selling our room to someone else, instead transferring us to the related 'same, same... but different' hotel about 3 blocks away. The network of narrow, clustered streets are very confusing in Hanoi's Old City; you're almost guaranteed to get lost at some point! Therefore it took us a while to get our bear...

A little groggy after the night bus to Hanoi, we had just one night there before going on our Sinh Cafe tour to Halong Bay. With so many companies offering tours to the area, we knew it was going to be busy but nothing prepared us for the madness that followed on our 3 day/2 night tour. It started well on our bus to the boat pier. We were talking and joking to a really friendly Vietnamese family who spoke English very well. They were on their holiday from work ...

Arriving in the developed city of Hue was a little disappointing after the quaint feel of Hoi An, but the areas around the Perfume River that ran through the centre were quite pretty. We walked quite a distance to find somewhere to stay a little way from the main tourist street, and were rewarded with a huge A/C room with an amazing view over the rest of the city from our balcony for only $10! On our first day we visited the Citadel, an old fortified city which...

The journey from Quy Nhon to Hoi An was fairly uneventful, made more interesting by a Vietnamese student who kept passing us notes on the bus written in english as he was too shy to actually speak to us! He then seemed to become travel sick from all of the writing so I felt a little bad. As soon as we arrived in Hoi An we both fell for its charms immediately. Listed as a World Heritage site, this small riverside town had narrow streets lined with pretty yellow...

For our first stop on the east coast of Vietnam we decided to go to Quy Nhon, a small quiet fishing town that doesn't really have much of a tourist scene. However, as it was off the tourist trail it was a bit of a trek to get to. Firstly we got the overnight bus from Saigon to Nha Trang, which would have been ok had we not been forced off the big bus into a tiny minivan at 2am. The driver also seemed to need to keep his music on constantly which didn't help, b...