After a lovely breakfast at the hotel we headed back to Hanoi by bus, on route there was a massive thunderstorm and loads of the side roads were flooded, which made for an interesting drive. We arrived in Hanoi at lunchtime, checked into our hotel in the Old Quarter and headed out for lunch. We got food from a small kitchen on the street, where we sat on small plastic chairs with a plastic table and ate a local dish - Bun Cha, which is pork in a watery sauce and...

We arrived in Hanoi train station about 4.20am and got on a bus for 3 hours to Halong Bay. The bus was freezing and the there were so many bumps in the road it made it impossible to sleep, so when I got to the hotel I had to have a little nap to prepare me for the day. We all met up and headed to the harbor to get on our boat which would take us around Halong Bay for the day. The boat was lovely and it had been rented privately for our group so we had so much sp...

After leaving Hoi An we set off on a 3 hour bus journey to Hue in the north of Vietnam, on lots of bendy roads, high up with big drops and a really fast driver!! On route we stopped at what was once the boarder to take photos of the amazing scenery and the bunkers which still remain. Arrived at the hotel and the electricity was out, as there was no air con we headed out for lunch with Dara our group leader to a local place and had chicken, rice and vegetables, f...

Arrived at our hotel, which was really nice and even had a swimming pool for a change, had a quick shower and headed out for lunch with the whole of the group. Had a really tasty lunch in a small restaurant and tried lots of local specialities (the diet is really not going well, with all this lovely food). We walked around the old town which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it was so quiet (as they ban motorbikes from the town for most of the day) in comparison t...

After arriving by train we took a short bus journey to our hotel. As it was so early the rooms were not ready for us and we waited around in reception, I felt so dirty and all I wanted was a shower and some sleep. While we were waiting for the rooms Dara took us to get breakfast, we found a little street kitchen where the lady cooked for us eggs, beef, onion and tomato on a griddle with lovely fresh bread, all for just under 1 pound!! We did have to sit at a mina...