Well after 48hrs on a coach we finally arrived in Hanoi. We did break up the journey with a night in Hoi An but it was straight onto the bus the next morning for another 24hrs coach marathon. It was pretty event free apart from Becki getting an ear infection and a complete plonker ripping off the coach ceiling light, as the driver wouldn't turn them off. Needless to say the driver wasn't happy and stopped the coach and proceeded to call the fuzz. About forty five mintues in a lay by we continued the journey as he paid a sum of money for the repair work. The second connecting bus for the final overnight leg of the trip was three and a half hours late - smashing! All in all it was ok......ish

My first impressions of Hanoi weren't the best. We got dropped off about five km outside of the city (that old chesnut!) and was told by the people greeting us that they would take us to the travel agents as promised for free. We ended up getting dropped off at a quest house and it wasn't very clean so we picked up our bags and left to find the Friendly Guest House, where we were meeting Naomi and Jenna. At least we were in the centre of Hanoi now. However, the lad who was going to take us to the travel agent as promised had different ideas. He started following us and demanding that we paid for the taxi that was FREE! We were adament that we weren't going to pay as it was just another scam. We kept explaining that we were told it was free but he wasn't having it. He then started to get agro and started shouting at the top of his voice 'Who do you think you are?!' and 'F#@k you'. This went on for over five mintues and to get him to leave us alone we decided to get in a taxi. At this point he got really pi##ed and started to threaten us and started to make calls and saying that his friends are coming to beat us up if we didn't pay.....!! At this point it was getting a bit much and in all honesty, you stick out like a sore thumb being a traveller in Vietnam. For a start even I am about two feet taller than all the locals! It wouldn't be hard to find us and mug us so we decided to pay the little pr*ck!! I'd heard from a couple of people that the north Vietnamese aren't that nice generally and I was starting to believe them.

We bumped into the girls straight away and organised to meet them later and book the Halong Bay trip. It was going to be a one night stay in Hanoi as we booked the trip for the following morning. It was the Carling Cup final in the evening and I took great pleasure in watching the match - come on you blues! One down - three more to win.

At 7.30am, a minibus picked the four of us up in the pouring rain and we set off for the boat. To our disappointment, it was still raining 3hrs up the coast in Halong and the trip was a bit of a wipe-out to be honest. Halong Bay consists of over three thousand limestone islands that jut out of the green South China sea and is a worldwide hertige site. We spent 2 days and one night sailing round Halong Bay. However, everything was crammed into the first day (caves and kayaking) and due to the rain, it wasn't much fun. Still, the four of us made it enjoyable by having marathon games of Blackjack (card game) and admiring the beautiful scenery that surrounded us - even if the tops of the limestone rocks were shrouded in mist! The best way I can describe it is, it was like a scene out of the movie the Goonies. I just kept thinking that a massive Gallion Ship was going to sail out of the misty limestone mountains and Sloth was going to shout 'hay you guuuys'! To my utter disgust and disappointment this never happened......! A boy can dream though.

Another annoying element of the trip was the guide. He spoke excellent english and was very nice but I think he had a little problem, because every couple of minutes he would hock up the phlegm from the bottom of his lungs. It was disgusting and he felt it necessary not to spit it out so seemed to be able to do it all day long. I should imagine that by the end of our second day he had hocked up his entire body weight in phlegm. It was so annoying bless his cotton socks.

We arrived back in Hanoi mid afternoon and it wasn't long before we had to be at the train station to make the nine hours overnight journey to Sapa.

Bye for now

Miffy x x x