So 23 hours from Vang Vieng to Hanoi, start to finish turned into 30 hours! What a journey.. We had front row seats whilst on the mini van to Vientiane and it was savage seeing so clearly how they drive out here. For one there are no markings on the road, speed cameras and little to no road signs so the Highway Code is non existent out here. It is pretty much a free for all with only a toot of the horn to make cars/motorbikes/bikes/cows/dogs aware that you are coming up behind them, also taking on 3 cars at a time when It comes to overtaking is the norm. Everyone on the road is constantly weaving in and out of each other at such a fast pace, Keli and I are shocked that we've only seen the devastation from one crash whilst being out here and that's it! Sharing the road with cattle as well is so far from what we are used to. Then for the sleeper bus from Vientiane to Hanoi.. It was the most strange journey, we got shoved to the back of the bus where the toilets were so every time the door swung open we'd get smacked in the face by this horrendous smell. Ive honestly come across better smelling porto loo's! The bus was like some mad disco, tech rave that was pimped out with all these flashing LED lights.. We got to the Laos border at 2am where the bus turned off its engine and we all manage to grab some sleep without feeling like we were getting chucked around (dues to bad road conditions-pot holes) so then 6am come around and we were woken up by the loudest most fastest tempo, up beat disco music! I nearly had a heart attack, it was insane.

Hanoi makes London look dormant. The streets here are mayhem! Although we have been very cultural with our time here, our second night was spent at the theatre watching a Vietnamese tradition. The water puppet show, you may laugh but it took us by surprise at how much we actually enjoyed it! We went on quest to figure out who Ho Chin Minh actually is and why do the people here worship him so much but the museum we went in left us more confused than when we actually entered the place. All we gathered was, was that he communist president who ran the country for 45 years! That evening we turned into your stereotypical boozy Brits, bar crawling all around Hanoi's old town which ended up at this club just on the outskirts of town. Aaand it didn't even end there, we'd made friends with a group of Welsh lads earlier on in the evening who had made really good friends with a couple of the locals. They were super nice and invited us back to a lock in, we jumped on the back of these mo peds (owned and driven by the locals they are friends with) and we ripped through the roads which lead us back to this pub. We walked in and were greeted by two of the waiters who took my drinks order from me once I'd sat down, I felt like a celebrity! So I'm sitting there right, with these two Vietnamese men who have there eyes fixated on the football that was on the t.v (they can't get enough of it here, everyone supports either Chelsea or Liverpool) and we're all having a drink together. They were even cracking open pistachio nuts for me, to share with me and we all just spent a while just hanging out drinking, eating and having a joke! We were treated as one of their own, they was such good company... And no I'm didn't just make that up!

On our 4th night in Hanoi our 2some became a 5some once again, when the girls we have been previously traveling with came and met back up with us as we've planned to travel Vietnam together. It was so great to see them again! We spent the next living the life of a tour guide and took the girls on trip round Hanoi so that enabled them to witness all the best bits.. Even just after a day of being in the city the girls were feeling aggravated, we had a little time on our hands before Christmas and was all on the same page about wanting to get away from the madness. Asap! We ended up having different desires when it came to how we were going to spend the next few days.. Emily, Danielle and Keli all took a boat trip a little further south to an Island called Cap Ba. Tessa and I wanted to get more involved with the Vietnamese culture and their way of life, so we went slight North West of the country to Mai Chou.

Mai Chou was oh so very refreshing, we were probably two out of about five white people that were staying in the village at the time. It only took us 3 and half hours to get there but by the time we arrived at our destination it was late and the sun was going down rapidly, so we just grab ourselves a room in a guesthouse for the evening. We spent the evening wandering the streets of the quaint little town in search for some food. It didn't take long until we came across this one lady who rustled us up a piping hot chicken noodle soup. It was SO much colder in the north so the soup really hit the spot. The next day we went and found ourselves a little home stay, it's something that's a really popular experience to have whilst staying in Mai Chou. Basically what it is, is that you stay with a family who live within the village at a very cheap rate. They provide accommodation and food which we devoured each meal time! We stayed with the Hao family who are the bomb diggity at cooking, I'd go as far as saying it was the best food to pass our lips to date. The lady, Bing was her name, that we were staying with also was very talented at making Cotten scarfs.. During our stay she had some spare time to share her creativity with us and we were both given the chance to give it a go! We couldn't of timed our stay there any better really as every Saturday, a coach load of University students come flooding in from Hanoi and they have a massive party on the field exactly opposite our home stay. We had the chance to take part of the evening which ended up (in the words of Tessa) chugging rice wine out of bamboo sticks and sharing the local cuisine with the locals. We also had the chance to witness some traditional Vietnamese dancing, so elegantly performed.. It was lovely! The whole evening there was not even 5 minutes that would go by without us being pulled in by a Vietnamese which would then be followed up by a full on photoshoot, we felt like celebrities.. Haha! They made us feel so welcome and were so kind and generous the whole night, it really was one of life's unforgettable experiences. The roads that make up Mai Chou and that run through the surrounding villages, up into the heights of the mountains are very quiet ones. We decided to take advantage of this and get behind the handle bars of a couple of motorbikes as this was our first encounter with such vehicle. At some points it would be just us two ploughing through the open road.. Freedom in its purest form.

I plan to enrol Christmas and New Years antics all into one... Until then!
Peace and love always x