Hi all So we were up with the larks once again, and off to see the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. This is a prison built by the French in 1896 and was reknowned later on for holding, torturing and killing Vietnamese revolutionaries. It was not a pleasant place to be. No hot and cold running sympathy for these folks. They were kept in really appalling conditions and the overcrowding was pretty severe. Built for 450 inmates, in 1953 it held 2000, but some did manage to...

Hi all So up we got, bright and early, and headed off to see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. This is exactly what it says. The body of the late great Ho Chi Minh is laid out in an open casket, and people queue up and shuffle past. A trifle morbid perhaps, but this guy is the epitome of Vietnam. He freed the country from the French, The Chinese and laid the foundations of defeating the US, and as such is revered here. Like us and David Beckham. He also founded t...

Hi peeps Well, off the coach we jumped, grabbed our bags and followed our tout to a waiting taxi (along with 2 other guys, one an Austrian botanist named Gunther - I love that, and an English guy who was instantly forgettable) and we were off into the mayhem that is Hanoi traffic. I thought Bangkok was bad, but this was absolutely mental. 5 million mopeds, liberally sprinkled with buses, taxis, huge 4 x 4s, lorries and vans, all doing exactly as they please ...