Hoi An is lovely! We stayed in Sunflower Hotel which was a little way out of the main town but it was only 20 minute walk or a 10 minute cycle. We met up with Lucy who had been in Hoi An for 5 days already. She loved the place too but headed to Na Trang the following day to celebrate Christmas. The village is very sweet, lots of lovely little restaurants by the river and many clothes shops to get tailor made clothes! I probably could live here it's so love...

Sunday 16 December was the last day in sunny Sapa so we decided to take in the views all day with some great food, my first ice cream of the trip, maybe also some carrot cake (to share!) and then we treated ourselves to a nice Vietnamese body massage. Half an hour of massage lying on a heated bed was heaven and only cost 80,000 dong (£2.37)! We were all relaxed to jump on the night bus! I didn't manage to get much sleep as I had to keep turning over from on...

Christmas day HAPPY CHRISTMAS ...we visited Marble Mountain which was 30 minute on a motorbike. We climbed up the mountain and there was a massive budda placed in every cave. I'm not quite sure how they got them up the mountain and in the caves, it is pretty impressive. We climbed to the top through some caves and were stopped by some Chinese lads who wanted their photo with us (this is a common occurrence here, I'm not sure if they think I look like someo...

Great flight, great food, no messing around - straight there in perfect time, comfortable seats and even a tuna sandwich! I couldn't have asked for more And there was Lottie standing on the other side as I arrived...unfortuantely her rucksack didn't make it to Hanoi so she was trying to sort that out when I saw her (don't get me started, I had a day of "oh I really hope I get my bag! Lol. The normally 'so calm and collected' Lottie was stressing a little heh...

So some odd things I have noticed in Lao so far - firstly the men have at least one long fingernail. I'm not sure why, it just looks weird, but I intend to find out why soon! Also there are no safety rules here in Laos, a bit like Thailand. Just jump on a rubber ring and float down the river, no warning of rocks or anything, no safety talk caving, tubing nor did we have anything for the zip wire or scooters in Thailand. They just happily let us get on with ...