Hello from a wet and cold Vietnam. Our travels have seen us arrive in Hoi An today after probably the most testing time of our trip so far. We arrived in Vientiane, Laos on Monday and had a few days there. Vientiane is ok, but as a capital city it lets Laos down. The place is pretty dirty and run down in places but there's enough to do keep occupied for a day or two. After the news we got in Vang Vieng about the floods in Hanoi, all that's been our minds has been do we go or not? Most of the people we spoke to in Vang Vieng were in the same situation, and changed their route into Cambodia. We however already had our Vietnam visa for the month of November only, so a week into November we decided not to go to Hanoi, and get on the bus to Vinh in Vietnam as it was only 12 hours from Laos (compared to 24 hours to Danang).

Our rationale was halve the journey time, stay one night and get the train to Danang the next day. This happened, but not as easily as it sounds. The bus from Laos was ok, but Vientiane bus station was a nightmare. As you arrive people crowd around, fight over you, yoink your bags away and stick them on their bus. It just so happened that ours was the crumbiest bus but the journey turned out alright; horn honking and erratic driving aside. The border crossing on the Laos side was a free-for-all and a frustrating experience, given all we needed was a stamp to walk a few hundred metres to the Vietnam checkpoint.

When we started getting close to Vinh we noticed that the other people on the bus were waving at us. A little dazed after a brief nap we noticed our bags at the front of the bus and the conducter chap pointing and shouting Vinh. The bus started to slow and a heated Lao-English dialogue ensued which went "Vinh, Vinh, Vinh", "Yeah I know, but take us to the bus station with everyone else" "Vinh, Vinh, Vinh, hotel". Next thing we knew the bus had stopped and our bags were on the pavement surrounded by opportunist cyclo drivers trying to give us a lift (men driving scooters insisting we could fit on despite our bags). We were dropped outside a hotel that wasn't open due to renovation works, so we jumped in a taxi and headed to our guesthouse. When we arrived we noticed we had been driven in a huge circle as we could see the hotel where we were picked up, and then we were done on the exchange rate as we paid in US dollars.

Things picked up slightly though and our faith in the Vietnamese people was restored when some staff from the local bank gave us a lift to the train station to buy tickets. We'd been walking for an hour to find a map or any tourist info to no avail, and not a soul spoke English. We booked our tickets for the next day, for 4pm (which we checked 3 times), but when the tickets came they said 04:16. It was funny how when we asked the woman to change them she stopped understanding English!

So we made our way to the station at 3am, and arrived in Danang at 1:30pm. The weather was terrible which meant we couldn't go to any of the beaches there so today we hopped on a local bus to Hoi An, an hour down the road. We were happy to see other travellers and local people who speak English, but the weather is still pretty bad. Hopefully it will pick up but most of Vietnam is suffering with wind and rain at the moment. Our next stop is likely to be Nha Trang, a lot further south so hopefully it will be warmer there and we can see the beautiful beaches of Vietnam. Until then we've got Hoi An's old town, the Marble mountains and (hopefully) China beach to look forward to.