Our accommodation for the first two weeks we are in Hanoi is with a volunteer group that teaches English to Vietnamese people by offering them the opportunity to live for 3 months with other students and English teachers so that they can immerse themselves in English morning, noon and night. The houses they stay in are called 'homestays' and are located around Hanoi. Our role so far has been to interview new candidates for the next course to start on Monday. I...

We left Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on the sleeper train for our 36 hour, two night trip, to Hanoi at 7.30 in the evening. We boarded the train a half hour before we left and found our compartment. The train looked very dirty and well used on the outside. Inside the compartments had four beds, two up two down. Our initial impression was that the bedding looked clean, which is always a good start. Chris was on the top and I had the lower bunk which was facing t...

This last week we have had fun exploring Ho Chi Minh using grab bikes to get us around. The city is so vibrant and full of life, it is a great place to people watch, especially riding pillion on a bike. The people here use motorcycles and scooters just as you would a family car, carrying mum, dad and two kids down to the shops or packed to the gunnels with merchandise for a roadside stall. They think nothing of weaving through the traffic with 10 foot pieces ...

This past week has been very humid with the occassional heavy downpour or thunderstorm. The rainy season has just finished and the temperature averages about 35 degrees with approximately 75% humidity. Aircon is a must and luckily our room has aircon. When you step out of the room the heat engulfs you and sucks out all your energy. We are about a half hour from the city centre and, as there is hardly any public transport just buses, on our trips into town w...

Well here we are in Vietnam. We were going to travel overland through Cambodia, but it was easier to get three month visas by flying in from Bangkok. We will still visit Cambodia in January. Lovely Linh and her family collected us from the airport to take us to the English centre they recently established, where we will be helping their Vietnamese English teachers for the next two weeks. On the way we were invited to a celebratory family lunch they were havin...