Cobra blood. Safe.

Hello people. Letting you how Vietnam has been. Had a really good week but been pretty hectic! Stayed in Ho Chi Minh city for a few days and enjoyed the madness of it all. Best people-watching venue by far! Obviously we tested the local drinking establishments thoroughly, as you do. Met loads of new people and had a great laugh. Went to the "Museum of American War Crimes", we can safely say it was a pretty one-sided view of the 'Nam war! Pretty interesting though and had some excellent photos. Also did a spot of sight seeing and went to see a big cathedral, it was pretty much what you'd expect a cathedral to be like!

After discussing our options we thought it was best we travelled in style so we took a plane up to Hoi An in the centre of Vietnam. It was ony $1 more than a 14hr train so seemed like a good idea! What we didn't realise was that to get to Hoi An you have to fly to a little place called Danang which can only be described as a dump, it's basically the closest thing we've found to Hartlepool/Middlesbrough so far. After spending a night in an ant-infested room there we made our way to Hoi An which is a brilliant little town close to the coast. Really old buildings and not a huge amount of tourists which made a nice change. In the few days we spent there we managed to get ourselves a tailored suit each. I'm not going to lie, we looked damn hot. We had considered just wearing them everyday but thought it best we sent them home. Went for the cheap sea-mail option and they're now expected to arrive in England sometime in February (hopefully)!! We also had a brilliant day when we rented mopeds to take a look around the town and to go to the beach. Unfortunately it's still rainy season here so you get some really quite strong downpours so we were drenched for most of the day but was still really good fun. I had a really cool black and silver bike that I named Buck (the Beast) and Joey got given a girls bike that was purple and had a basket on the front. We named her 'Dream'. People were actually openly laughing in the street at Joey as he rode past on his princess. So funny!

We also spent a couple of nights sampling the local bars and for some reason got talked into having a shot of cobra blood and vodka. Mmmm, delicious. It was as rank as it sounds! Also went to our first beach party on the night, was about 20 people there and it was peeing it down the whole time but still had a right laugh. After waking up with a somewhat hazy head, we decided it was best to move on so we spent 18hours on a bus up to the capital, Hanoi, which is where we are now. It's a nice place with plenty to do and sells local "fresh beer" for 12p a glass. This obviously brings the city up in our estimations. Unfortunately the feds don't take kindly to drinking past midnight and regularly shut places down that stay open longer than this. We managed to find a loop-hole though by going onto a floating river boat club that the police don't have the juristiction to close it. Result.

Today we went to see "the next 7th wonder of the world", Ha Long Bay. Really beautiful place but the weather was a bit pants which was a shame. It was an 8-hour round trip for 4 hours looking at rocks but was still worth it. Had a walk inside a huge cave there which was really impressive and it contains Veitnam's equivalent to the Blarney stone, the "Lucky Breast". Obviously me and Joey took great pleasure in getting as much luck as we could possibly extract!!

Anyway, we're getting on a plane early tomorrow morning to Bangkok before making our way down to the islands for the full moon party at the beginning of November. We'll be meeting up with plenty of people we've met along the way so really looking forward to it.

Peace and love. PK & JW x

Anyway, see yas laters!

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