An hour in the air and then we were in Hanoi. Found some relatively cheap accommodation then went to 'Fanny's' icecream shop and had scrummy passion fruit sorbet and watched the thousands of bikes wizz past and occasionaly in to the cafe. Spent the nexy day wondering around the bustling back streets of the Old Quarter and arranging a tour to Halong Bay...

Got picked up from our hotel early the next morning and 3 hours later we were in the famous Halong Boy. We boarded our charming Junk boat (way nicer than we expected) and set sail in to the bay where we were soon surrounded by emerald waters and hundreds of jutting limestone cliffs. The days activities consisted of lounging on the top deck, visiting the 'Suprise Cave'-the suprise being a willy shaped rock (didn't really help that they'd spot lit it in pink), jumping off the boat/swimming in the sea at sunset and watching the lightning storm at night. Beautiful place, very good day.

Floated on back to the port the next morning, got the mini van back to Hanoi then boarded the sleeper bus to Hoi An. Sleeper bus was a new one, it had weird double decker dentist chairs, not entirely comfortable but better than a chair for 12 hours!

PAT!