A long coach journey back to Hanoi meant one thing. We had to fill up on all the Vietnamese food that we love before we leave for Laos tomorrow. The day went like this. - Breakfast at 8am - Coach journey at 9am - Arrived in Hanoi after nothing to eat or drink at 4pm. - Banh Mi - Pho Bo - Banh Mi Three meals later we realised that because we are now posh travelers and flying to Laos that we have become stupid. We didn't even consider the fact the we now hav...

We had received some information from someone that the mausoleum in Hanoi is worth a visit. A shrine to Ho Chi Minh himself where his preserved body can be visited, a weird but must visit attraction. So we were told. In search of this year view of a preserved human body, we ended up doing nothing but failing. Fail 1 - We were excitedly rushing round what we thought was the mausoleum to view the preserved corpse. It turns out we had just paid 50,000 dong to get ...

After genuinely feeling lucky to be alive, we got off the death bus in Hanoi at 6am in the middle of a typhoon. Soaking wet we managed to get a passing taxi and go to our hostel. At this point it was impossible to get an idea of what the capital city is like and for once we were able to check in and not have to wait until 2pm. Tired and just wanting to sleep we made our way up ten flights of stairs, bags weighing double as they were wet. Once we got settled and w...