We left Vang Vien on the 14th which took about 3 hours.. There isnt a whole lot to do in Vientiane apart from drinking..and having spent a week in Vang Vien that was the last thing we wanted to do! So we decided to change our route slightly and head up to Hanoi on a 24 hour bus. The bus was an experience for sure, me and Suz were the only westerners on the bus just a load of weird Vietnamese guys. They played Vietnamise variety show dvds full blast for hours!!! The bus stopped for a few hours at the Lao/Vietnam border so we managed to get about an hours sleep. Woke up to be told to go through immigration we had no idea what to do as no one spoke English we thought the bus had left without us as it took so long! When we finally tried to get our passports stamped to go through the Immigration dude said "No Id card, No entry to Vietnam today" We had no idea what he wanted us to show him but what ever it was we didnt seem to have it and spent the next 15 mins panicking that we were gona have to go back to Vientiane. Finally after showing our plane tickets and paying him a dollar each he stamped our passports.... pheww. Turns out I accidentially payed him $20 in the confusion, so a military guy came after us saying something about $19.... we thought he was trying to get us to pay more so we refused to go back inside for ages and argued with the poor bloke! opps! We found our bus hadn't left without us but we had to wait for ages in the rain whilst they searched it from top to bottom for drugs. lol. Spent another 10 hours on the bus to Hanoi, so happy to finally get there only to be accosted by a local woman and having no energy to say no we just gave in and went to her guest house... luckily quite nice and has HBO and free internet.. Bonus! We went to a waterpuppet show by the lake which was rather entertaining. We have also been to Ha Long Bay which was beautifull but the tour was really disorganised. But we did manage to visit some caves near Cat Ba island and go Kayaking. We slept on the boat in a tiny cabin right next to the generator, opposite an old guy snoring and next to the loud TV! Nice enough though had all our meals included in the tour however we were not expecting all the meals to be exactly the same. oh well was a nice few days and the weather was lovely! Back in Hanoi again spent a few nights out found beer Hoi junction and went to a club in a hotel with two irish boys. Got a motorbike to a bar last night both of us on the back which was fun there are no rules on the road so we were weaving in and out of the traffic at great speed being abit drunk we thought it was hilarious but looking back slighty dangerous.. There are about 3 million scooters in Hanoi no joke so crossing the road involves taking your life into your hands, Can get a bit annoying at times especially as we are constantly being harrased by the locals so walking anywhere takes ages.

Leaving Hanoi today either for Sapa or Hue, but we will update and let you know where we end up

Hope everyone is well, thanks for the messages.
Lots of Love C & S xxxx