So the first thing to note about Vietnam is that they show premier league football and on our first night we found a little pub (half man, half noodle) which shows football - all day everyday....Ben was quite at home here! Hanoi is a very busy city and seems to be constantly on the go. There are millions of motorbikes with a few cars mixed in making crossing the road seem impossible.... but once you get the hang of it its not too hard. Basically you just step out, don't look and keep walking (everything you were told not to do)....the motorbikes just navigate around you.

The temperature while we were in Hanoi was around 30 degrees and we explored the city in the sweltering heat. We walked around the large lake in the centre of the city and enjoyed freshly cut pinepple served on little stalls on the waters edge. We also visited the Imperial Palace and the cities pagoda.

In the evenings we got stuck into the local street food, which is not only ridiculously cheap but really tasty as well. And its so easy, you just sit down at a little table on the street and a bowl of whatevers cooking is served up to you. Each time we've managed to eat a meal and have a beer for £1-2 each - amazing! Sitting in little plastic chairs on the edge of the road while motorbike whiz past is also an experience! After this we joined the locals for drinks in the street, plastic stools crammed round the stalls selling the cheapest beers, everyone mixes and its as good as any bar to be honest :)

On our 3rd day we booked onto a 2 day boat trip to Halong Bay. We spent two days sailing around the bay, swimming, exploring massive limestone caves and kayaking around the large craggy peaks that stand out of the water throughout the entire bay. We enjoyed our first bit of sunbathing up on the top deck of the boat and enjoyed freshly prepared seafood from the boats kitchen. It needs to be said aswel that since arriving in Vietnam weve seen a lot more people selling whatever cheap things they can get their hands on, we were amazed when we were sat in the middle of Halong Bay miles from anywhere and a woman comes rowing up to the ship with a boat full of goodies for us to buy and smuggle onboard! The transaction takes place via a fishing net passing your order up to you on the deck of the boat.

On our return to Hanoi we collected our bags and headed straight back out and to a bus that would take us to our next stop - Hue. However, this was no normal bus.......it was a sleeper bus!! So, in China we did sleeper trains and felt we managed quite well, sleeper buses are a completely different experience! We were crammed into the bus with 39 other people and given a bed which is similar to a dentists chair, only a bit more tatty. If your lucky and your chair isn't broken you can move it from a sitting position to a lying down position. Our beds were at the very back and so we did not have this luxury and the position of the chair was set in between sitting and lying down. There are two layers of beds (upper and lower) and they are crammed into every available space with some only reached by climbing over others. Once the journey is underway the lights are switched off and the air con is blasted out (it gets very cold despite the high temperatures outside). Just to add to the delight of the journey the bus was driven in the typical Vietnamese fashion - swerving in and out of traffic, overtaking on bends, beeping the horn every other minute and generally making sure that we felt every bump and curve in the road. And so we spent 14 hours like this, with occasional toilet stops along the way. And after having survived the experience we now have to face another 3 trips on one of these buses!