22.11.08 Km travelled 18822 It's raining so hard that I'm really glad we decided to leave this morning. As usual we have to wait a while for the bus to come. For us has been an incredibly long and boring day on the slowest bus ever in the world. We spent ridiculous money for a lunch we didn't order and didn't even finish, plus the bus wasted a lot of time in unjustified stops every hour. We'd been told it was going to take eight hours and it took twelve. But fortunately the landscape was very beautiful along the way and [View Full Entry]

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19.11.08 Km travelled 18462 This morning we can finally take it easy. The train is at 10.45 so we have plenty of time. We wake up slowly, and relax, we we can lay in bed as long as we want. It rained heavily all night. When we are ready we go downstairs for breakfast and then we check out. It's not raining now so we can walk to the station. We ended up taking a bit of a long way around and when we reach the station it's raining again. Michael gives me a bit of a laugh slipping down the [View Full Entry]

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17.11.08 Km travelled 17982 We've been sleeping almost all night. It means it wasn't that bad at the end. When I open my eyes we're still one hour from Hué. We're all still half asleep. When the bus parks, in a place that looked like anything apart from a bus station, we grab our bags and get off. A young guy wearing an helmet is holding a sign with my name and the one of the hotel. I wave at him and he helps us picking up our stuff and put it on a van. We jump on and in few [View Full Entry]

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16.11.08 Km travelled 17402 We look outside the window from the height of our room but there's not much to see. A curtain of fog is hanging outside. Still is our only day here so we will try to make the most out of it. We have breakfast at the hotel to make it easy. We also have to leave all our stuff at the hotel as tonight we're leaving. As soon as we're ready we meet our drivers, Dai and Go. This hotel is apparently famous for its safe drivers, so we're keen to try. We jump on the scooters [View Full Entry]

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14.11.08 Km travelled 17252 The start of the day hasn't been very fortunate. But you can't always tell the day from its start. We woke up very early to have some breakfast and make to sure to be ready to leave by 8.00. The breakfast room was very busy and we had to wait to be served. Obviously we wouldn't have rushed if we knew that then we would have had to wait more than half an hour for the bus to come and pick us up. I was already getting quite nervous, as we knew that to get to Ha [View Full Entry]

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13.11.08 Km travelled 17082 Ha Noi is a very nice place, but having decided to spend one more day here we thought it was worth getting out and see something else. The choice has been then a trip to the Perfume Pagoda. We've been picked up in the morning at our hotel and joined a group of people already packed in the van. Half of the group was a family, I think from France/Martinique, parents, two kids, and two grandparents. As for the rest of us, it was a big mix. A French girl on a short trip between Ha Noi [View Full Entry]

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2.11.08 We woke up early this morning, with the only purpose of going to see Ho Chi Minh. The ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex closes at 11.00, so if you plan a visit you' ll need to be there early. We weren't actually planning to visit the whole complex, but still, we wanted to walk there, which took us some time. The third (or fourth including Stalin, even if you can't actually see him) embalmed communist hero on our way, we really couldn't miss it. Considering the fact that, with all respect that Vietnamese people have for him, he as well [View Full Entry]

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Km travelled 16942 10.11.08 This morning is incredibly hot inside the cabin. The train has been going fats all night. Until now we seemed to have crossed an endless periphery of tower blocks, with clothes hanging outside together the air conditioning. Now all you can see from the window is rice fields. Early in the afternoon both sides we see crowds of tall buildings, bars to all windows, I remember the movie “La stella che non c'è”. What we are looking at is perfectly shown in the movie, plus is a masterpiece so if you haven't seen it you should watch [View Full Entry]

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09.11.08 The sun has come back to shine over the city on our last day here. Time has come to pack our stuff again and get ready to leave. We decided to spend our last few hours in Beijing at the Temple of Heaven Park, just half an hour walking from the hostel. It is apparently the finest example of Ming architecture ever built. And it's truly amazing. Despite the fact that traditional Chinese architecture can look the same everywhere, these round buildings with sky blue tiled roofs, are stupendous. Here we reached the top of our popularity when a lady [View Full Entry]

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07.11.08 Today we have some more good news. First thing in the morning we walked to the Vietnamese embassy. The whole area is populated by embassies, one after the other. At the office we talked to a nice lady that reassured us telling that the flood caused no problem in the centre of Hanoi but touched only the outskirts. Same for Ninh Binh. She said we're not going to have any problem. Nearby we stopped for breakfast at a French bakery and walked the five minutes to the silk street. We have to say, it's been a horrible experience. Five stories [View Full Entry]

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