We had one free day in Hanoi before joining our Intrepid Tour group. We had lunch with Morris and a few of his friends there before having a quick look around the military museum and Temple of Literature. Our group was 12 people in total, a mixture of Australians, Brits and one American with a Vietnamese guide, Hahn. For our first group meal we ate out at a non-profit restaurant that trains street kids and disadvantaged children in the hospitality industry to enable them to eventually get a job and support themselves.

The driving in Hanoi is crazy, and there are many, many more motorbikes than cars, some carrying up to five people! They toot their horns constantly and junctions are just chaos as no-one really gives way. Absolutely no notice is taken of zebra crossings or white lines and they often drive on the wrong side of the road or even the pavement. You have to cross the road dodging motorbikes because if you wait for a gap in the traffic you'll wait all day! We also saw a man on a motorbike running a red light and a policeman swinging his truncheon at him as he sped by!! Unsurprisingly we saw a couple of accidents in the few days we were there. You can't really walk much on the pavements, they are usually full of small tables and stools with pepole eating and cooking or used as motorbike parking lots, elsewhere they are are uneven and full of potholes. A curious thing here (we saw it to a lesser extent in China) is that all similar shops seem to be together i.e. a street of tyre shops, a street of pharmacies, a street of florists etc. You spend ages looking for a shop you want, to find 10 of them all together!

On the first day of our tour we visited Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and saw his embalmed body watched by four armed guards. The Vietnamese are very fond of their old President who liberated them from the French and led the country in the war against the Americans, they affectionately call him Uncle Ho. We saw the Presidential palace and visited the old Hoa Lo Prison before taking a cyclo tour at rush hour through the Old Quarter, and watching a water puppet show. A cyclo is a bicycle with two wheels at the front and a seat that you sit in and watch the world go by while a little man behind peddles you to your destination.

The following morning we got a bus to Halong Bay and saw many things along the way piled on the back of motorbikes, including crates of chickens, ducks, pigs and our guide says he's seen a cow! It seems that there are very few things that can't be hung or tied on somehow. We passed through rural countryside which consisted mainly of rice paddy fields which are all planted and harvested by hand. We were to stay overnight in Halong Bay on a sailing junk and contrary to it's name, was far from a pile of junk. We had a lovely cabin and the food produced in the tiny kitchen was wonderful. It was quite cloudy and visibility was a little poor but still Halong Bay was beautiful and very impressive. Sheer limestone cliffs rose vertically from the sea in hundreds of different islands with bushes somehow growing out of the bare rock face. It was a little like was saw around Phi Phi Island in Thailand but on a larger scale. We visited a cave before kayaking around some of the islands, and even through a cave tunnel into the centre of a ring shaped island.

The following morning we sailed back to the wharf and got on the bus back to Hanoi. We had a free afternoon before boarding an overnight train to Hue. We stayed in a four berth cabin but shared it with a fifth occupant - a mouse!! It soon fled out through a hole once it saw Martin coming after it with a flip flop and we managed to block it up to try and stop it getting back in and didn't see it again.