This morning Quong met me for the last time at my hotel as it was my last day in Hanoi as I was booked on the overnight bus to Hue this evening, but Quong wanted to show me around the museum where he volunteered before I left. When we arrived at the museum, Quong showed his ID badge to the guard at the door and managed to get me in for free.The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology features a collection of art and everyday objects from Vietnam with maps, videos and dioram...

This morning I had a lay in trying to catch up on some of the lost sleep during the 3 days in Halong Bay, so I didn't leave the hotel until after 2pm, so I went for a walk around the city to some of the places in the Lonely Planet that I hadn’t seen yet.The first place I headed that was called The Memorial House, which was a restored traditional Chinese-style house that shows you how local merchants used to live in the Old Quarter. The house was quite ...

Today we were up as told at 7.30am for breakfast except for Rob and Sara who had decided to stay on Cat Ba Island for a few extra days to see some more of the island as we hadn't really had the time to explore it properly. They were going to catch the boat back another day and they tour guides had already confirmed that this was OK. I wonder who was looking after their pig at the hostel or whether there had been bacon for breakfast for a few days while I ha...

Today I had another early start as I had a long day ahead as we were going to drive out to the Perfume Pagoda and it was going to be my first time riding a bike, let alone riding one 120km!There were four of us heading out today, there was Quong and his, ahem, boyfriend Daniel (a German student living in Hanoi), and Summer and they came over to my hotel at 10am to pick me up, Quong and Daniel on one bike and Summer and myself on the other bike. First thing we h...

I was quite surprised to see that Quong had turned up at 9am at my hostel to pick me up and drive me round Hanoi showing me the sights as we had planned last night. He had brought along a spare helmet and I jumped on the back of his bike and we set off around the city on these crazy roads.Our first destination was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex where we stopped at the One Pillar Pagoda which was built at around 1054 and designed to represent a lotus blossom, ...