GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, and it certainly is a good morning once you've managed to drink down a cup of rocket fuel coffee with condensed milk! Our trip of 1,000 miles from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh has begun....

Our first moment in Hanoi started with being ripped off for our taxi, but that goes without saying in the cities of Vietnam. Hanoi is the 1,000 year old northern capital of Vietnam. It's renowned for its crazy motorbike traffic which requires a death wish to cross the road without watching how the locals are doing it! Our first day was spent organising the next 2 days ahead, but we did have a wonder round constantly trying to avoid being hit by a motorbike! We were staying in the renowned Old Quater which is full of little street side cafes/bars and eateries packed full of locals sitting on plastic furniture which looks like it was stolen from playgroup! However you can't complain when you can get a decent meal and a beer for 1 pound! We've tried to delve into local food as much as possible (as there is no other choice!). Chowing down local favouraites such as Pho (fermented fish noodle soup), fresh spring rolls and washing it all down with the extremely strong rice wine. We tried to avoid ordering thit cho aka lassie, the vietnamese will try anything once. A local delicacy is having snake sliced open eating its still beating heart with a cup of its blood! Not sure that we will be trying that one anytime soon...

Vietnam is renowned for its copycats, we soon found that out when looking for a recommended tour company, Sinh Cafe, we searched for this tour office and soon became a bit of an enigma when we discovered every other building had "Sinh Cafe" above the shop door, but we eventually found the right one and booked our trip to Halong Bay for the next day.

Halong Bay (descending dragon bay) is a world heritage site made up of just short of 2,000 islands which from above looks like a dragon, if you watched the recent Top Gear through Vietnam Jeremy Clarkson and co made their motorbikes into motorboats here in order to get to the floating village within the bay. We took a scenic boat ride into Halong Bay which was soared up as a collection of mountainous islands surrounding a sheltered water village complete with its own school for the children. This community are born and die here and rarely venture to the mainland. We ate local seafood then took a small boat through the watery caves and around the village. It truly was a magical place. We then visited a couple of caves in the area which were lit up like Santas Grotto with lovely plastic penguin bins scattered, which was a bit random and ruined it slightly! The next day we bought a train ticket to Ninh Binh. The vietnamese have an interesting method of queuing which involves gouging with elbows and pushing eachother away to get to the counter, they even interupt when you are in the middle of buying a ticket! The 2 1/2 hr south was quite an experience as it's not like catching the National Express to London. Basically 3 people were crammed onto each park-like bench and the carriage was a cross between a chicken coop and an armoured military train with bullet-proof metal shutters for windows! Rob had some ladies baby on his lap the whole way. Furthermore all the announcements were in Vietnamese, the train stopped in random places with no names and no-one spoke English so we had no idea when to get off! Luckily through the use of gestures and a pen and paper we managed to find out when to get off! Getting off was also a challenge as we couldn't fit our massive backpacks through the overcrowded walkway to get off! We finally made it to Ninh Binh anyway, which is a small city surrounded by beautiful mountains with rice paddie fields. Our 1st day was spent looking for some form of nutrition that wasn't barbequed dog. The next day we got up early for a 40km guided bike ride around the local area. The 1st challenge was navigating through the scary highways of the city. Locals use their horn to warn you when they are behind you which can give you quite a fright when a lorry lets off its extremely audible fog horn. The roads are like a symphony of horns, it never stops and they toot for the sake of tooting basically! So we eventually made it to the countryside where we firstly took a boat ride down Tam Coc river to visit caves carved out by the water. It was a beautiful journey full of the aromas of flowering orchids. We then walked to an 800 year old temple where we made a prayer with incense and ate "lucky fruit" offered to us by a monk, unlucky for Trudi though as it was banana and it would have been rude to refuse so she took a few small nibbles whilst holding her breath but once the guide and the monk turned their back for a split second, she gave her banana to me! We then cycled through local rice paddie villages to the audience of multiple locals shouting "hello", conical hatted women hard at work, cockrels cock-a-doodle-dooing, mountain goats bleeting and water buffalo wallowing. I got a lot of attention from the locals whilst on our bikes - due to my pale skin and white hair, the locals see this as something beautiful and are often seen walking round with umbrellas in the sun to prevent themselves from tanning. It is a huge compliment to tell a vietnamese local that she has pale skin and many soaps etc habe whitening in made to whiten the skin.....must stay away from those says Trudi - "it will be no good for my tan!" Anyway, we then made our way to a famous pagoda (place of worship) in a mountain face and a couple of other local temples by which point we were beginning to flag in the afternoon heat and we didn't exactly dress to the occassion, forgetting we were visitng religious sites we were not covered up and got a few stares! A relief from the heat but not from the embarrassment and humility. Some parts of the track to the temples were poorly lit and the guide could see I was struggling so to my surprise he grabbed my hand saying "take care my friend" and helped guide me down the steps. Trudi was chuckling behind at my humming to try and disguise my embarrassment, however it was a very sweet thing to do and led to me doubling his tip! We then took the bumpy mountain trek back to Ninh Binh which was full of panoramic views of the moutains over the glistening paddie fields. Instead of motorbike traffic to avoid it was stray dogs and chickens. We thought we could finally get some respite on our return to Ninh Binh but not until the guide dragged us up a hill to look over the city! We could hardly keep ourselves awake at this point and we were desperate to go to the loo after having held it in for 4 hrs! All in all though one of the best trips we have been on so far, full of amazing views and rich vietnamese culture and we had a good giggle. Now waiting to get the overnight bus down to Hue which is almost halfway between Hanoi and HCMC....