Sapa: 2nd May - 7th May We caught the overnight sleeper train to Lao Cai (no more sleeper buses for us!), the nearest railway station to Sapa. Lao Cai is in the very north of Vietnam, virtually on the border with China. The sleeper trains have compartments of either 4 or 6 bunks depending on the price of your ticket. We opted for the 4 bunk version as neither of us really fancied sleeping with our nose pressed to the roof of the train! We shared a carriage wi...

Hanoi: 26 April – 1 May Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam but is smaller, less brash and supposedly more sedate than Ho Chi Minh City. To us outsiders though, the energy, bustling people and traffic of Hanoi was virtually on a par with HCMC particularly in the Old Quarter around our hotel where the bulk of the hotels, restaurants, shops and markets are located. Our bus back from Halong Bay dropped us at our hotel in the late afternoon and we had an early dinne...

Halong Bay – 24th to 26th April 2011 We arrived in Hanoi in the early evening after a full day of sight seeing and travelling. This is our first visit to Hanoi and is only a short one night stop over before our 3 day boat trip at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Halong Bay. It was a bit of a shock to the system being back in a big city again, motorbikes everywhere and so much noise. We had forgotten just how hectic the cities in Vietnam were and the thought...

Ninh Binh & The Perfume Pagoda: 22-23 April 2011 After Hue, our next destination was the city of Ninh Binh, just a short distance south of Vietnam's capital, Hanoi. We wanted to take the overnight train to Ninh Binh to avoid eating into the very limited time we had to spend here but the train times were particularly unsociable and would have resulted in an extra nights stay which we couldn't afford in our tight itinerary, so after much debate we finally agre...

Hue: 19-21 April Firstly, an apology: The obviously popular Ghost Writer has departed these shores and returned home. Although his antics will live on for the next few entries, you're back to hearing from us! Also, thank you for all the messages/e-mails we've been receiving - it's great hearing from you although it's been difficult to reply due to Facebook/Hotmail restrictions in Vietnam. Anyway... We hired a car and driver for the relatively short hop north ...