After we left Hoi An, we briefly explored Nha Trang, a very western styled city with a huge coastline of sandy beaches. Here we went to two aquariums, went on a boat trip around islands with a crew who were in their own band and played "yellow submarine" in honour of all the English people, the drummer was playing on a home made drum kit made out of bins, they were amazing! We left Nha Trang for Dalat, and arrived right in the middle of its monsoon sea...

We decided to spend an extra few days in Hoi An in order to catch the full moon festival which we though was every month, however on the last day we found out it was just every lunar month, so it never happened and we never got to see the floating lanterns and the traditional dancing and games! However the extra time turned out to be very useful for curing all our shopping needs. Hoi An is the shopping capital of Vietnam, with over 300 tailor shops, shoes shops ...

Have managed to escape the cyclo drivers in order to write this blog. Since arriving in Hue we have been constantly harrassed by hotel owners, motorbikes and people selling art on the street demanding we buy from them! However the cyclo drivers are the worst, we were warned about them from the guide book, but we didn't expect to be chased down the road and even physically pushed into a cyclo. They never seem to understand the term "No thank you!" Howev...

We have been in Vietnam for a few days now, and have been pottering around in Hanoi and sailing around Halong Bay. We spent the first few days in Hanoi shopping around the amazing night market - bought lots of clothes and dvds which we are not sure if they work!, went to the water puppet show, went to the prison for Vietnam people during the war as well as American POWs (like John McCain). We also went to the art house cinema to see precious which was very depre...

My memories of Hanoi will always be asociated with the aawful journey to get there. We decided we would take the mỏe expensive over night sleeping bus in order to make the 24 hours more bearable. However whilst we diđi get our ơn bed, we ended up having to bbasically share it with 3 other people who were packed together so tightly on the bus in the aisle, so make matters worse i ha a vomiter right next to me, i never actually thought i would get used to the s...