Travelled a few hours further south to a pretty UNESCO protected city called Hoi An - all cobbledy streets and French style houses. Caught up with Claire and Lexy again and spent a small fortune on new made to measure clothes... On one day we hired bikes and cycled to the beach about 5 KM away to sit in the sun. Sadly it wasnt to be the relaxing day we'd hoped and dreamed of... first we got into trouble for parking our bikes in the wrong place and got shout...

Finally left Hanoi and caught the overnight train south to Hue, a city about halfway down Vietnam. Spent the first day wandering around the Citadel and the market whilst being followed at all times by at least two cyclo drivers and a motobike man all yelling 'Cheap ride, cheap ride.' On the second day we went on the best tour of our trip so far.....riding on the back of a moto. It was wicked fun speeding through tiny villages and rice paddies where ever...

GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!! After moving to a new hotel nearby featuring unused towels and clean sheets, we were all set for a new start in Vietnam and ventured cautiously into the Old Quarter with fellow journey from hell survivor Mima. Spent breakfast practising the newly introduced 'Brace, Brace, Brace' airline crash position for readiness to deal with the never ending stream of sellers. Slowly but surely with the help of 6p beer* our powers returned, but taki...

So finally arrived in Vietnam in one piece despite THE journey from hell!! Forget cushty flashpacker style travelling, now we can officially call ourselves professional travellers after we left Laos at 6.30am only to arrive as broken people in Hanoi at 1.45am....... Our planned itinerary was supposed to be another straightforward jaunt into a new country but instead it lurched from one catastrophe to another..... The Laos part of the journey featured highligh...

Have had a wicked time in Thailand.....we spent a few days in Bangkok not doing much and trying to get used to the heat, then headed north to little town called Ayutthuya to check out some famous ruins. It was lovely being out of the city and we spent the days cycling around even though the whole town was suffering serious flooding and the river had risen by about 10 feet! Ruins were still pretty impressive though...After a couple of days we headed west to Kancha...