The bad, the really bad, and the bizarre. The three things I will remember most about Hanoi are the cycles, the hassles, and the posing.It may be a bit unfair to classify the cycles as bad but since we had arrived from Laos where the drivers would actually stop to let you cross a road and we hadn't heard a horn blast the entire time we were there. That all changed in Hanoi as I think that the only skill set taught in Hanoi Drivers Education is how to lay on y...

After feasting on copious amounts of rice and noodles for the last month, it was time for a bit of a physical challenge to tweak the metabolism a bit before my resemblance to the Happy Budda became any greater. To that end we arranged for some mountain biking out of Bac Ha which was located east of our fog safari in Sapa. We were joined on our 2 day bike adventure by a couple of Aussies, Sarah and Andrew- Sarah's family was Vietnamese and she quickly became t...

We boarded the overnight train to Lao Cai with a bus connection straight uphill to Sapa. Since it takes 12 hours, the train offers up the very civilized option of sleeper cabins for the night but it's a cabin for 4 so you have to hope you aren't linked up with the heavy drinking and snoring types- we ended up with a couple of honeymooners but given the size of each of the berths (designed by the same guy who worked on that knee-crunching bus in Laos), the...

We planned a Xmas stopover in Hanoi where DH tried in vain to place a bunch of Skype holiday calls to loved ones back home only to be stymied by power outages, internet server crashes, and Skype traffic. We even had a specially planned concert by Jazz W interrupted by the follies of long distance communication but we're hoping to reschedule once the internet traffic dies down a bit. DH was showing signs of holiday homesickness so it was time for a big league ...

We've always relied on fellow travelers to give us some insight on some of our planned destinations but that didn't work for us as we tried to determine the value of visiting Vientiane- we got largely negative or lukewarm reviews which had us thinking about skipping the capital however I didn't think we were finished with Laos so when we found out that the VIP Bus from LP to Vientiane was 'only' 8 hours I was able to get DH on board. I don'...