The 6 hour bus trip down to Vang Veing was pretty much a blur, due to the condition I was in but whenever I did open my eyes, was again treated to some amazing views of mountain backdrops and jungle filled valleys which made the pot holed road journey a lot more bearable. We'd been recommended by a guy at the Vang Veing bus station about the Phonsavan bungalows in town which were relatively cheap and clean so we checked it out. And they were, so for 60,000kip a n...

After about 18 hours of travelling by bus we eventually hit the Laos/Cambodia border. By this time we'd actually had our minds changed on our destination by some travellers we had met on the journey, and had now decided to head further north to a place called Luang Prabang. We had to wait for about 3 hours at the border crossing for the authorities to acknowledge that we was actually there. Luckily we'd hooked up with four people on the bus doing the same trip ...

The day of the Halong Bay Boat trip, was supposed to be picked up at 8am but wasn't till 8.30 we got on the bus, so was a good start. It was a very bumpy four hour journey to the harbour but as soon as we saw the huge limestone mountains (islets) that looked like they had erupted out the sea, we knew we was in for some jaw dropping scenery. We were ferried across to our "junk" on a smaller boat and greeted with green tea, then sat down for lunch before checking i...

At 9am we eventually got to our hostel, ''The little Hanoi hotell'' which we'd been recommended, after being drove around the block a couple of times by the taxi driver who clearly knew what he was doing, but having just got off the bus after 12 hours we were none the wiser and pointed in the right direction. On arrival at ''The little Hanoi hotel'' the owner met us and he took for breakfast at another of his hostel's just round the corner which was included. As ...

We'd booked up an excursion for the next day to take a trip along the Song Huong (Perfume River), with the bank of the river home to the Tombs Of the Nguyen Dynasty. We only visited one of the tombs but was the most impressive, the Tomb of Khai Dinh, with 127 steps to the actual tomb itself, and again lots of detail, the emperor was buried 18m underneath in solid concrete. On this tour we learned a few facts about Vietnam itself, the yellow star on the flag repre...