Arrived at 9am to the town of Hue- Bombarded by touts and finally settling for a hotel at 10$ a night, (it was only 10$ because we were on the seventh floor of the hotel with no lift - noticing a theme of steps for our travels!) we dropped our bags off and had a look round Hue. People are friendly, helpful and the town looks nice - just a shame about the rain! Going to try and have a relaxing day today abecause after hardly any sleep on a packed, sweaty, full of ...

Met up this morning with Klara, a girl from Brighton, we met las night and planned to do the tours with today. We'd planned to share a car and a driver, but that worked out to be more than twice as expensive as a motorbike and driver each, so that's what we ended up with. A bit scary at first, putting yourlives in the hands of complete strangers. It turned out to be a really good decision though because we got to go down little country roads and paths away from...

Another early start this morning but instead of a nice fry up we had to hit 10 million steps to get to the top of one of the islands - again not the best news we could have heard. Look at the photo's of the island with the little pagoda thing on top - thats the one we went up! We were well knackered by the time we reached to top of it and thought we were hard done to - then we thought about the poor b*****s who had t build it and tale the stuf up there! From h...

Bright and early get up this morning for our 8am bus to Halong Bay. A 3½ hour bus journey and we were there with the rest of our group, faced with 100's of junk boats. We clambered over about 3 boats to get to ours - not easy work when you've got a 12kg bag on your back! Our boat was lovely, set on 3 floors, ground floor is cabins, 1st floor is the dining area and more cabins to the back and the 2nd floor is the top deck, great to view but a bit col...

Claire woke up to a huge scream and bang from the bathroom - Dave had fallen over cracking his side on the bath. Following a silent half hour and a sulking Dave with now 'broken ribs' we set off on his itinerary - no temples, no monuments, one prison, 2 cafes and an ice cream shop called fanny's. The prison, known as Hanoi Hilton has now been more or less knocked down apart from one side, which still holds some detention cells, death row and the guillotene!...