The review guides say 'If you can afford it fly' and from our experience I'd say they were right. We left Hanoi on a rainy Valentine's Day desparately needing the sun back and had booked onto a ''hop on hop off bus''. Worst marketing ever as this is precisely what it was not. It was pretty much just all your tickets bought at once and although we were sold it as a ticket which allowed you to jump on a bus by booking 24 hours in advance this was actually at least...

What a difference an hour makes....its cold and crazy in Vietnam. After an easy hour flight and an even easier skip through the border (even though our visa wasnt valid for another 4 hours) we arrived in Hanoi. Thank god we opted out of the 30 hours sleeper bus. From the minute we stepped out of the airport we knew Vietnam was going to be a lot different to Laos, not only was it cold, it was hectic. Never before have I seen so many motorbikes on the road, and in...