The day started in the dark as we arose from our beds at 4am. Our flight was delayed by about an hour so James and I napped on the seats, a bed we have gotten used to over the past two years! Chris had gone to ask when our flight was due to leave and all of the signs were displayed 'Delayed'. Suddenly over the airport sound system, there was an announcement for passengers in the party of Christopher Wiper. We had almost missed boarding, we sprinted to the des...

We did a quick shopping spree in the morning and with a lovely taxi driver we arrived at the airport, bound for Hoi An. Our hotel in Hoi An was part of the same chain so we got a pick up at the airport for a MR Gail Wiper and in 40 minutes we were in the gorgeous town of Hoi An. The hotel was lovely, with a swimming pool and excellent rooms. We explored some of Hoi An's Old Quarter and were all very impressed with the ancient buildings, shops, lanterns and gre...

The taxi driver from the train station to our hotel tried to pull a fast one on us by switching some notes around. Luckily Gail and James were awake enough to spot the clever con! Our well-oiled travel agent (Gail) had organised the Halong Bay trip to start on the same morning as our night train arrived in Hanoi. We had a 3 hour change over where we ate breakfast at the hotel, James had a two minute shower and Chris took about 20 minutes and we were picked up ...

The weather didn't look any brighter but we thought we may as well go for the trek-when in Rome. We met our charming guide Pang and after a shoe change for Gail we were on our way. Little did we know what lie ahead of us. I think we all presumed it would be a stroll to a few tribal villages and learn a bit about the culture of the Hmong (pronounced Mong) people as we went. Oh how naïve we were! By the end of the day we were all covered in mud from numero...

Eight bleary eyes awoke to the sound of awful scratchy music blaring from the train's speakers. We were almost at our destination of Lao Cai. We had an hour transfer to the hill station of Sapa. The cloud (or snizzle my mizzle) had began to creep down the mountain side and after around 20 minutes of beautiful views across Emerald paddy fields it all went white. The rest of the day in Sapa was pretty miserable, in terms of the weather so the plan of a motorbik...