Apologies to Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman for cribbing their tagline. Today, after 24 hours on the road, it certainly seemed like we had travelled "the long way round". We knew moving on from Hoi An was going to be slightly more difficult as the nearest train station is at DaNang, necessitating a journey there before catching a train to Saigon. We also knew that part of the track had been damaged in the last few months when someone managed to crash into a s...

Hoping the backpacks would follow us in a minibus, as promised by the nice guy in the travel company we left Hue on the back of our rented moped and headed for the open road. Fortunately for us, he insisted on leading us out of town to ensure we didn't spend the rest of the day circling Hue, so we were soon cruising along the coast road, the smell of salt and fish in our nostrils. The scenery was interesting as we passed areas of land covered with large graves...

As we arrived in Hue we soon became aware we were in town just before the biannual Hue Cultural festival. Lights were being erected, signs and banners posted across the town and it seemed everyone was getting ready for a big event. Even the Cyclo drivers were preparing as they peeled purple sticky-backed plastic and used it to refurbish the metalwork on their machines. Following some investigation as to the events which would be taking place, we both agreed it ...

Ninh Binh was about two and a half hours from Hanoi by train but seemed like a world apart. The area was extremely picturesque with karst hills, like the ones at Halong bay, but this time jutting up amidst paddy fields. We decided to have a complete change from our usual hotel and booked to stay in a bamboo hut. In the event, our bamboo hut was huge, with its own tiled floor bathroom complete with flushing Western toilet and one of the best showers we'd seen al...

Hanoi is a place we warmed too slowly. After a month in leisurely Laos moving to the faster pace of Vietnam took some adjusting too. We thought we would be easing in by entering via Dien Bien and Sapa but Hanoi still arrived with a bit of a bang. We'd become proficient jaywalkers in India so didn't think we'd be fazed by the traffic here. What we hadn't allowed for were the number of times the blocked pavements and parked mopeds necessitated walking in the gutt...