Today we had a very early start. Most of us up at 6am for breakfast in the hotel and a quick pack up of our bags before getting on the bus for a 4 hour bus ride to Ha Long Bay. We drove for about three hours through the Vietnamese countryside, seeing all the farms and farmers at work, working on the rice farms and the buffalos. Before we stopped at Dai Viet for a quick toilet stop, food stop and a look around the shop that contained all things made in Vietnam. We...

Today we started the day with an early start and breakfast in the hotel before heading out for the city tour of Hanoi. The weather was hot, 30 degrees by 8am. We started off by heading to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, to see uncle Ho's body, it was a very amazing and unique experience, we had to cover our knees and shoulders before entering the Mausoleum which was largely protected by guards. We got to learn some of the history around Ho Chi Minh and what he did for...

We landed in Hanoi where we cleared customs and collected our bags, luckily we only had one bag mishap, when Monique's bag didn't come out but after talking to a few people it arrived after having to be inspected in customs. We met our tour guide Tony who took us to the nice air conditioned bus (was 29 degrees outside!). We headed off to our hotel in the old quarter of Vietnam called the Skylark and all found our way to our rooms. We then got the chance to change...

Our flight to Kuala Lumpur was pretty good, some people enjoyed plane food and the others not so much. Lots of us got plenty of sleep but others weren't so lucky. We had plenty of good movies to watch and keep ourselves entertained though. We arrived into Kuala Lumpur in 26 degree heat, so lots of us quickly got out of our Southland jumpers and into our shorts and t shirts. We had a while to look around the airport before getting on the air train and heading acro...

We arrived into the domestic terminal in Auckland around 8pm where we all collected our bags and headed over to the international terminal, joining the long line to check into Malaysia Airlines to get out of NZ. We had a few hours to get through customs and get some food before finding our seats on the big plane and settle in for the long flight. Fair to say we were all pretty tired by then.