Have spent a quiet few days in Hanoi. It's really cold at the moment which is restricting what I'm able to do, I just have not brought enough clothes to cope in this weather! I bought myself a better map- yes Katie you were right! And have spent the past day planning the first part of my route. I now know which boarder crossing I want to take into Laos, the only problem is the guide book describes all remote crossings as 'a set menu from hell' so really looking f...

So I have been in Hanoi for 3 days now. The hostel is great lots of different people from all over the world, thankfully for me English seems to be the international language. The people in Hanoi are all very friendly and everything is very cheap. The traffic in the city is frightening, I was getting really worried about the prospect of cycling. The german cycle tourer was quite reassuring, but the traffic was still my biggest concern. The longer I watched the...

So typically I woke at 3am to my jet lag, I wrote my previous 2 blog entries, maybe still under the influence and dropped back off to sleep. I did not even consider what time I needed to wake up to get to the airport on time, simply assuming an early afternoon flight would give me loads of time to play with. Flight at 14.30, need to be airport checked in by 12.30 latest, leave hostel 11, time to get MTR and collect bike etc.... Woke up in a haze at 10.50!!!!! Aaa...

After the day I'd had on Saturday I decided to go it alone today. Mission 1; find coffee. My guest House is in Mong kok, on Kawloon side (cheaper side), all full of locals not a big ex pat community and not as westernised as HK island. No Starbucks here! I trailed the streets for 45 mins before finding a French cafe, the did proper latte and had English speaking papers- this set my day up well morning sun beaming through the window large mug of streaming coffee ...

Day 2, my first full day in HK. My guest house offer a tour of the city, a full day job taking in all the big HK attractions, for £35 including lunch and a couple of hrs at this animal park (zoo). Not 100% my type of thing at the best of times, but in my jet lagged state I could see no better way of being shown the main sights of HK. I woke up at 4.30 (great start!), tour began at 7.15- pealed myself out of bed... In search of only one thing a hit-(my caffeine a...