Friday, March 6th We woke to a cool, overcast morning. It was a lovely respite from the crazy heat of the last few days. As we left the hotel for breakfast Ferdi's watch fell from his arm, one link pin rusted completely through. It must be the permanent sweat of the last month. After breakfast we booked bus tickets leaving for Hoi An the next day, then went strolling around town looking for a place to have Ferdi's watch fixed and also for a tube of some kind to put our paintings in. We easily found someone to fix the watch once we got to "watch street". The streets here seem to have a theme eg. Watch street, t-shirt street, bag street etc. The only exceptions are mobile phone, camera and scooter repair shops. These are ... read more

Tuesday, March 3rd So today was the day we would see if we'd get our passports back. We had to wait till the afternoon cause we joined a guided group tour for the day to visit some of the many tombs, temples and mausoleums scattered throughout Hué. We got on a "Dragon boat" and cruised down the Song Huong (Perfume) river to the Garden House, then to the Thien Mu Pagoda where we saw, amongst other things, the car that Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, took to the intersection of Phan dinh Phung street and Le van Duyet on June 11th 1963 in Saigon. As soon as he got out of the car he sat down in the lotus position and burned himself to death in protest against the Ngo dinh Diem regime's policies of ... read more

Sunday, March 1st We left Cat Ba island and a smaller boat took us an hour to our big boat. The bay was quite rough at times and we had to keep looking at the horizon to stop us getting sea-sick. On board the big boat we headed back to Halong Bay harbour. We played a game of chess and Talita won, just when we thought it would be a draw. After lunch at a beautiful spot overlooking the bay we headed back to the craziness of Hanoi. Long told us that 25 years ago there were 10 million people in Vietnam. Now it's about 85 million! No wonder the streets of Hanoi is so crazy! In the last month we've noticed that the west's obsession with non-smoking laws are slow to catch in the ... read more

Friday, Feb 27th We arrived in Hanoi at 5am and hugely overpaid for a taxi into the old quarter. Nothing was open yet so we sat by the lake observing the strange dance of the early-bird exercise community. Some shuffled backwards, some hit their backs and heads, some swing their arms, lift their legs and kick, some walk and others jog. If you thought yoga looked funny you should see these people. They even set up a "weight room" next to the road. There were hundreds of them. It's free and much more entertaining than our snotty Virgin Active! At breakfast we realized that 200,000 dong was missing from our wallet. We tried to figure out where it went and the only thing we could figure was that when Ferdi tipped the lady after dinner last ... read more

Wednesday, Feb 25th We woke up to a feast of pancakes with banana and honey after which we said goodbye to the Hoanz family. We hiked to the Red Xao village where we visited the primary school and then on to our lunch spot. Hai cooked us noodle soup and then the mini-van picked us up and we headed back to the hotel. We said goodbye to Hai and had a nice bath. Later we walked around in town for a short while but then we found a bottle of great French red wine. We went back to the hotel and sat enjoying the lovely sunset view and sipping our wine. Today's highlights: 1. Banana & Honey pancake breakfast. 2. Soaking in a bath. 3. Enjoying a bottle of 11 year old French red wine.... read more