Our train pulled into Da Nang station at midday on Tuesday, 24 July. We had decided to take the bus through to Hoi An so we headed off in search of the bus station. It was scorching hot so the walking was not fun, but we soon realized that the busses actually drove past the road we were walking down so we just waited and flagged one down. Once on the bus we learnt that the system is quite dodgy: the drivers drive like crazy people - picking up passangers witho...

We arrived in Hue (pronounced 'whey') at around lunch time on Sunday 22 July. We learned our lesson from last time and immidiately bought our train tickets for the next two legs. The map in our guide book wasn't very clear, but it looked like it wasn't too far into town, so we decided to walk. Unfortunately, we went a bit of course and in the end we walked for over an hour with our heavy packs on :-/ After finding a place to stay, we had a shower and then went ...

This time our carriage had seats with cushions, which made the return journey from Haiphong to Hanoi a good deal more comfortable than before. We arrived at the main station at around 19:00 on Thursday 19 July, with the plan to buy tickets for the 23:00 sleeper train to Hue. The train station was manic (it seems the Vietnamese have no concept of queing - you just need to push your way to the front) but eventually we managed to speak to a ticket lady. She inform...

Our train arrived on time at Haiphong Station in the early evening on Tuesday 17 July. The hard wooden seats had been pretty uncomfortable, so we were glad to be able to walk around again. We had been put in contact with a guy named Duy (pronounced Zwee) who is a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend back in Cape Town. He is an English teacher and pastor and he was kind enough to meet us at the station. He helped us get a taxi to a hostel and then then, once we'd shower...

We were a little concerned when we realised that we would be flying in an old-school propeller plane... neither of us had had the pleasure before and the engines didn't look very big. We were pleasantly surprised by Laos Airlines though - everything was shiny and clean and, even though it was just a one hour flight, we even got a snack after take-off :-) We landed in Hanoi late in the afternoon on Saturday 14 August. Even though we had applied for our Vietnames...