We arrived for the third time in Hanoi from Sapa (and used terrible toilets where women peed between bricks on the floor with no individual cubicles, yuk!) and Farley was there to meet us off the bus. We got a rip off taxi to their apartment which was really nice. We met his gf Hannah, who's lovely, and had some pizza and wine. Great to catch up and forgot how funny Farley was, with his crazy stories about what him and the boys have got upto. The next day we got...

We arrived in Sapa and got ourselves a bit confused. The hostel said they would pick us up from the station, and we wondered why they weren't there. Turns out that they aren't psychic and we had to give them a time and place as there were numerous drop off locations, silly us. This resulted in us being surrounded by the local Hmong women and asked, 'you want to trek? Come with me, buy from me.' And also us walking to the actual bus station before we decided to gi...

After a day in Hanoi where we did very little, we were picked up at 8.15am, drove until 12pm to reach ha long city. Lots of buildings being constructed and didn't seem like there was a lot there; just a stepping stone. We had a small boat to transfer us to big boat for lunch, which had a good selection but didn't include drinks. In fact, they had a large corkage fee, so we had to hide ours. We met Iris and Eileen, a couple of older ladies from Australia who we g...

Arrived in Hoi An after an overnight bus, which arrived an hour earlier than expected and called the homestay to pick us up, giving them the address we had on the ticket. 20mins later when we they hadn't arrived, I was thinking it was strange. But o well, someone showed up on a bike with our name on a card about 30mins later and on I hopped for the moto ride to the guest house. Turns out the bus had dropped up at the bus station, not at the address on the ticket ...

We arrived at 4.30, and found hotel An Hoa easily but again we get top floor. We have a habit of getting top floor with no lift and the back of the bus :( We had dinner at Lanterns, which was really good but not as cheap as we wanted. The weather was beautiful and sunny, a great day for sunbathing but not enough time today. Then wondered through the market: bought ourselves some Vietnamese coffee and a drip coffee maker. The town was all decorated for New Year Te...