Well, we do seem to have our fair share of experiences and the journey from Hanoi on the sleeper train to Nanning in south China was no exception. First class sleepers contain four beds rather than the two beds that are common on the trains we took in Thailand. Our room-mates were a mother and teenage daughter from Mongolia who were on their way to Beijing. They came on board with four giant suitcases and proceeded to take up all the luggage space under the...

Well hello Mr Bond........ Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun) was definetley holed up on one of these beautiful emerald islands that reach up out of the Gulf of Tonkin, close to the South China Sea. Covering an area of 15,000 sq km this is one of the jewels in the Vietnamese crown and another world heritage site for the country. The 3000 tiny islands in the bay are dotted with beaches and grottoes carved by the wind and the sea and have sparsley forested sl...

After the melting humidity of Hanoi we decided that there was nothing for it but to head for the hills. Nestled in the luscious hills on the border with China, Sa Pa is a peaceful former hill station with some spectacular scenery that is frequently shrouded in mist. We took the overnight train arriving at Lao Cai at 5am in the morning (who the hell does the scheduling for these trains!). Lao Cao is the last Vietnamese town before you reach China and was tota...

Sadly our arrival into Hanoi, via the overnight train from Hue, had a familiar ring to it and once again it was the taxi drivers who gave the city a disappointing first impression. We have learnt from bitter experience to always take a cab that has a meter rather than to negotiate a price up front, as the latter method will always have you paying the foreigner price, up to 10 times what the meter will read. Having been careful to select a taxi that promised to ha...

The DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) is an area of no-mans land about 40km wide along the 17th parallel that was set up in 1954 when Vietnam was partitioned into a North and South region in accordance with the Paris Peace Treaty. During the Vietnam war, it was the front line between the communist North and the South supported by the USA (and more than 50,000 Australian troops and additional forces from Thailand, New Zealand and the Phillippines). Many of the US for...