After 5 and a half days in Hoi An we were very happy to leave, given the states of our wallets...e.g. we don't have any wallets anymore because we had to trade them for food after buying so many clothes...ugh! To fly to Nha Trang from Hoi An we had to get a taxi half an hour to Danang airport. Danang airport seems to be an ex-US Air Force base, and possibly now a Vietnamese Air Force base as well, as across from the terminal they still have the original concrete hangars from the war. So after a flight in a midget plane from the worlds smallest airport (Danang) to the worlds even smaller'est airport (Cam Ranh) we were in Nha Trang. Our first impressions of Nha Trang are that its pretty similar to the Gold ... read more

Friday morning we arrived in Hue by plane at about 8.30am after leaving our hotel in Hanoi at 4.45am! Because of our short time in Hue we had to make the most of it and we went straight out to the Citadel on foot. The Citadel is an enormous square built in 1804 and surrounded by 10km's of walls, 4 metres high and 2 metres thick and surrounded by a 30 metre wide moat. Within the Citadel is another mini citadel that was the royal residence. The citadel area was interesting and we took a cyclo ride around for an hour. Our driver/peddler was pretty interesting and gave some commentary with his smatterings of english. He took us to some temples, Ho Chi Minh's parents house, a display of captured US tanks etc. We also saw ... read more

Today we had planned to get through a whole lot of the tourist sites such as the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Army Museum, the Hanoi Hilton and some pagodas (temples). We launched ourselves out of bed 40 minutes after we were meant to get up which seemed like it might actually have been a good thing because according to Lonely Planet most of those places are closed on Mondays. We decided that we would walk to these places anyway to have a look at the outsides and take some photos, besides, walking around Hanoi is enjoyable anyway and is pretty easy to waste time just looking. Our first stop for the day was the Army Museum; we came across this place just by chance because we had taken it off our list because it was supposed ... read more

We arrived in Hanoi yesterday at about 7:30 after an hour and 20min flight from Bangkok. We were met at the airport by a very snazzy looking car with leather seats and a driver in a suit! We hoped into the car and were slightly thrown off as the steering wheel was on the wrong side! It’s the weirdest thing! The drive into Hanoi was...interesting. Turns out they all use their horns every second (apparently if they stop honking they die...it’s like breathing??) and our driver was a fan of pressing the accelerator...then releasing it...then pressing it...then releasing it....you get the drift. Apparently pedestrians and push bikes can use the freeway too...we saw a bunch of factory workers walking to work on the freeway. After about 1/2 an hour we reached the outskirts of Hanoi...it was ... read more

It’s now 7.30pm on our second night in Bangkok and we’re sitting around waiting to go out to Patpong night markets aka ‘Sleazeville’ (Bianca wants to pick up a 'ladyboy'...whatever rings your bell?). Yesterday we touched down in Bangkok at 5.55am feeling rather crusty eyed. As we cleared customs we looked around for the driver to our hotel that Bianca had allegedly organised, and after waiting about 20 minutes rang our hotel to find out that they had no idea!. Following that we had a trip by taxi to our hotel which was Bianca’s first experience of Asian driving in Asia and she says that she’s surprised at both how well it works, and that there’s actually people living in Asia who are not maimed! Following our arrival at the hotel we set out on a ... read more