We arrived at our hostel at 4 in the morning from our sleeper bus, we grabbed our stuff and just fell asleep in the lobby of the hostel on some sofas. We were up and about again by 8 and decided to take a chilled day and explore the city a little. We went and looked around Ho Hoan Kiem lake near the old district of the city. It was a pretty cool place with good views across and old 12th century buildings built on islands in the lake. The lake is pretty special in...

We had a relatively good nights sleep at the home stay, the beds were not more than mattress inside a barn but we had bug nets, so slept without incident. There is a fair amount of wildlife knocking around and have seen various beetles, butterflies and moths out in the countryside. We were due to set off trekking at 10 so had a lie in until 9 which was a nice change, instead of the early starts. We set off again deeper into the rice fields and walked through unti...

Had a good nights sleep in Sapa to wake up to some pouring rain. I had left my shoes and some clothes out overnight to dry so they were absolutely sodden. We brought in our clothes and put them next to the fan in the room in a desperate hope they would dry. It was extremely misty and constantly threatening to rain while we were eating breakfast and getting ready. When we left at 9 it was still pretty awful visibility and weather, so everyone had their ponchos on....

Rocked into Hanoi at around 4 from the bus after Halong Bay. That same day me and Tom were leaving for the Sapa trip in the evening, so there wasn't much to do. We bumped back into some of the guys from Halong Bay who had booked the same hostel as us. We had been speaking to them on the boat and they were all looking for bikes to go south on. So I spent the few hours I had back in Hanoi selling my bike to a Dutch guy named Frank. Sold the bike for $150, despite h...

Waking up on Paradise Island at 7 to leave the island by 8. Everyone was feeling a little worse for wear after a big night. We left the island around 8 to reach our main big boat and head back to the mainland. While on our big boat we had a cooking course in how to roll spring rolls. We had a really good last lunch on the ship before reaching the mainland and taking the bus back to Hanoi. We arrived back around 4, having slept a little on the bus. I talked to som...