It rains a lot in Nam

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Gemma has written this as I'm too busy looking at F1 websites / facebook / online banking (trying to figure out where I have spent so much and why the value of the pound appears to be collapsing). Pics will follow soon.

I love Vietnam!

We arrived last week and the first thing we saw as we left the airport was a herd of cows wandering across the motorway! This kind of thing is normal here! Hanoi was crazy, so many motorbikes, scooters and bikes everywhere - crossing the road is quite an experience! And the things they transport on them... several times I have seen a family of four riding on one scooter. People carry logs, dogs, rugs, huge bags of rice, anything you can thing of really! Everyone wears those surgical masks to protect them from the pollution (another black bogie city!) but after a while they look quite cool - they come in all sorts of pretty colours! There are old ladies everywhere wearing conical straw hats carrying fruit in old baskets balanced over their shoulders. I just love it!

We had an overnight trip to Halong Bay where we slept on a junk. It was much nicer than we expected, considering what we paid for it, but we did have a rude awakening at 3am to hear an animal (a rat??!) trying to eat its way through the bathroom roof! Allan had no idea what was happening as he was fast asleep, but I was kind enough to wake him and allow him to go into the bathroom and bang on the roof to scare it off whilst I cowered under the (silk) covers!

Halong Bay is meant to be one of the must see sights of Vietnam but I wasn't convinced. It was very pretty but I suppose we have been spoilt by all the fantastic things we have seen and done so far it takes a lot to impress us!

We then left for Hue on a 'sleeping bus' - a bus with beds in - what a genius idea!! We planned to stop off in Hue for a few hours whilst we waited for our next bus to Hoi An but the bus turned out to be fully booked. It was quite lucky really because Hue turned out to be lovely.

We are now in Hoi An, stuck here for another day (bus fully booked again!) in the pouring, and I mean POURING rain! But there are plenty of shops here so I should be able to keep myself occupied!

We like it so much we have decided to stay longer and then fly straight from Cambodia to Malaysia - a 3 hour flight instead of a 3 day bus journey. It means that we won't be going back to Thailand (boo!) but it does mean we will have to come back one day (hurray!)! We haven't had nearly enough time to see everything we wanted but we have given it our best shot!

Next stop is Nha Trang in Southern Vietnam, hopefully I'll manage a bit of sunbathing there!

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