Top Gear, Vietnam.

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After a marvellous swedish massage we boarded the flight to Vietnam and landed at 12:30pm. Jumped on a bus with some very loud locals and headed to Ha noi old town. Once we arrived we soon had a challenge to find a place to stay as all guest houses and hotels close at midnight. Thankfully we found a place with the help of a taxi.
The next day we spent a relaxing day in the city wondering around eating lots of summer rolls and went to a traditional water puppet show. The shows originate from the rice farmers in northern Vietnam 1000 years ago.
We booked an open bus to take us around vietnam the first stop was a two day boat cruise around Halong bay. There are around 3000 rocky islands wich We sailed between before coming to the caves not quite as fun and in Sagada as the caves can be walked through in a few minutes. Later we passed the floating fishing villages and then moored for the night in a quiet bay. We could jump off the boat and do a bit of swimming and canoing, we went right up to island and heard loads of monkeys but no luck with seeing any. It was a pretty entertaining evening lots of drinks and drunken entertainment.
Feeling fairly hungover we headed back to the city to catch a night bus/ sleeper bus. We each had our on bed for the 14 hour journey, they were really comfy but the driver wasn't the best.
Vietnam has a population of around 90 million and has 37 million mopeds on the road. In Hue we took a guided tour of the temples with Mr Loc on our two mopeds it was brilliant and so we decided to ditch the bad bus driver for a leg of our journey and take the peds instead. I was a bit apprehensive at first but now know we made the right choice. Our journey took us two day we spent one night in the business and costal city of Da nang. On route we stopped at the elephant water fall and drove up the road from the top gear Vietnam special...... so much fun. That night we went to a local fish restaurant and experienced some traditional danicing and kareoke and met some super friendly locals. Day nang to Hoian took us via a giant buddah next to the sea and then to some temples made out of marble in the mountains. We also saw the sun for the first time in vietnam. When we arrived in hoi an we had some local lunch which was nice and then went to the tailors. Nick got a suit and two shirts and I got a coat and a dress. We relaxed in the evening. We are now going for our first fitting and then around the old city. We are trying to add pics so stay tuned.

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