Hue to Hoi An (Motorbikes!) I did not sleep so well. I woke up about 6.30 in the morning, excited and nervous about the prospect of not only riding a motorbike for the first time, but riding it all the way to Hoi An (140km). My test drive was at 8.00, so I tried to distract myself with breakfast and computer. Eventually the time came. A man turned up with a black automatic scooter and I sat on the back as he explained the controls. Turn the key (yeah, yeah),...

Hue Ok, I am soooo far behind now, I dont know how to catch up. Sorry if the entries are now much smaller. Or maybe you will prefer less to read! Before I talk about Hue, I should explain what happened to my hostel: The man from the tour company told us it had 'falled down'! Intrigued, but imagining that this was some sort of loss of translation, we set of to investigate. What we found was quite unbelievable. Even from a distance we could see a very large cran...

Sapa Hanoi to Sapa I had already booked my 3 night, 2 day tour to Sapa before I left for Halong. It is a small town in the mountains, where more adventurous people like to go trekking. The trip began with a night train at 21.50, so I used my time in Hanoi to book an open bus ticket down the country and to buy some food for the journey. I had fun bartering in the busy market for fruit and then spotted a little supermarket where I purchased some chocolate and bis...

Halong Bay Hello All. I have been so busy over the last week or so that I have had no chance to update the blog. In order to catch up with myself I am going to group a few days together into trips. The first trip I took from Hanoi was to Halong Bay, a scenic location with thousands of small islands with more karst limestone peaks dotted about. Day 1 I was picked up from my hostel early morning in a transit van minibus. The journey was around 3.5 hours and to f...

Hanoi Day 3 It was another gloriously sunny day, the rain of the previous day seemed to be long forgotten, so I took the walk nice and slowly, so as to try and stay cool. I had decided to go and visit Hoa Lo prison. This was the central prison in Hanoi, built by the French, and is now a museum. The prison museum was really very good. The exhibits were well chosen and very well presented. It gave a very good picture of what life might have been like in there an...