Just an afternoon puppet show at the Water Puppetry Theatre before we headed off to KL for our Kuching flight

Our journey from south to north Vietnam is almost complete. We arrived, on the sleeper bus, in Sapa near the Chinese border. It is a town at 1500m above sea level in the beautiful mountainous northwest of Vietnam. The area is home to several hill tribes, Black H'Mong, White H'Mong and the Red Dzao. The tribes people make their way every day to Sapa to follow the tourists round trying to get them to visit their villages and buy their hand crafted blankets, jewelle...

We are staying at the Thaison Grand Hotel in Hanoi, lovely little room and good facilities. It has been raining a fair bit so we need somewhere to relax while the weather is bad. We have done many of the touristy things in Hanoi. On our first full day, we headed out in good weather to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum - fitting tribute to Vietnam's beloved leader Uncle Ho. The mausoleum is open between 8:00 and 11:00 except Mondays. There was a changing of the guards type ...

When the bus arrived at Hai Phong bus terminal, a tout boarded and offered a bus to the ferry terminal then a ferry to Cat Ba town, which we were told was a short walk from our hotel. At $9 each, we thought it was a good deal, they also looked after our luggage for a couple of hours before the boat departed. The hard bagaining Spanish girls were holding out for a better deal. The 45 minute ferry ride to Cat Ba was not so spectacular, it was raining and there were...

Paul was equipped with his headphones and music for the "sleeper" bus to Ninh Binh, but I only had earplugs. So, when the toilet door started banging and the toilet kept flushing every two minutes by itself I couldn't get back to sleep. We were dropped off at 5am outside town, a taxi driver offered to drop us off at our hotel for 50,000 VND (£1.45), which was a bargain - not sure I would get up in the middle of a drizzly night for £1.45. On arriving at our hote...