Hi all, We are now back in Hanoi for the last time! After we lwrote last we drove to Cuc Phoung National Park (about 1 1/2 hours) and had 2 nights hearing birds instead of horns. We had a birding guide there so were up and on the trails by 6:30am. We had some nice walks and saw about 50 new birds. From there we came back to Hanoi for one night then drove to the coast (3 1/2 hours) to Halong Bay where we got on a junk like the one in the picture for 2 nights. Our...

Hi all, I am building up all kinds of brownie points by at least starting this 2nd blog entry. We are now in Sapa in the north western highlands amongst all the various hill tribes. The overnight train ride was actually a lot of fun, we had a sleeper cabin with 2 lower and 2 upper bunks, but we were the only 2 in our compartment. We had been warned that the journey would be bumpy and would have lots of starts and stops so we had a half of an ove...

Hi Everybody, This is the first , and possibly last blog entry I (Malcolm) will do ,as I am basically a lazy so and so. I actually volunteered to do this first one. The choice this afternoon was to go on a walking tour of the "old quarter" of Hanoi where we are staying or to stay here in the hotel and do this (or at least something else useful) while Elinor went off to get a 1hr massage ($13.00 including taxi). We have been around the old qu...