We couldn't come to Vietnam without trying a cooking school experience and Phat had found us a great lady to teach us. Very funny. In fact she said at the start, 'If you don't laugh, you don't pay!' We all got nick names as the lessons went on. Gino became 'hot boy', I was 'veggie lady', Iain was first 'strong boy' which he preferred to 'chicken boy' which he later became! Others were 'onion sprinkles lady', 'romantic boy' etc. She was very entertaining. She would have us standing up chopping and dicing then say, 'Good bye lemon grass, hello spring onion!' Lots of song references and singing and of course all accomanied by wonderful smells. We learnt how to make spring rolls, spicey soup, a beautiful aubergene dish, a wonderfully flavoured and crunchy papaya salad (my ... read more

And so we arrived in the beautiful little town of Hoi An on the banks of the river Thu Bon, a shopper's paradise according to Phat, our tour leader. It used to be a main merchant port, founded in the 15th century, with traders coming from all over the world, Japan, China, Holland, France and Portugal. Some even settled in the town and many of the houses and buildings reflect their builders' origins. Two distinct areas arose the Chinese and Japanese communities and the Japanese had a beautiful wooden bridge built across the little river that divided them. It is now known as, you'll never guess, the Japanese Bridge! Hoi An was given UNESCO world heritage status in 1999 to help protect this beautiful town. Unfortunately they can't do a lot to protect it from the ... read more

We were met at the hotel foyer the next morning by a motorbike cavalcade waiting to take us off on a white knuckle ride of the local countryside. Having never been on the back of a bike in my life, and never having intended to go on the back of a bike I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. So Phat had decided in his wisdom to put me with the lead guy as he was the 'safest' and 'more experienced'. Trouble was, of course, that he headed off into the traffic mayhem first (after a 1, 2, 3 hoe harrrrrr from all the riders) while my knuckles got whiter and whiter! Our first stop, after avoiding all the other massed mopeds and moterbikes of early morning Hue, was the banks of the Perfume River (Song ... read more

As we set off in the mini bus from the hotel in Hanoi to the train station, ready for our overnight adventure on the Reunification 'Express', Phat reads out a list of everyone's names with a number assigned. This is to be our berth for the night. I'm not with everyone else! Either I'm not to be trusted and have to stay with Phat or I'm the one he thinks won't mind as much. Anyway he manages to pursuade a lady (who had booked into the 4 berth that three of our group were in) to swap with me and I end up with our crowd after all. I volunteered for a top bunk and a bit of rock climbing ensued to try and get up there. We had a four berth carriage, lockable, unlike the ... read more

Halong Bay, what's the big deal? Well if you describe it statistically, it's a water body of about 1.5 square kilometres with an 120km coastline in the Gulf of Tonkin, near the border with China and 170km east of Hanoi. It has 1,969 limestone 'islands' the tops covered with trees. It had UNESCO world heritage status from 1994, but since 2011 has been upgraded to one of only seven natural wonders of the world. If you describe it mythically, it's local legend tells of a family of dragons sent by the gods to help defend the land from the invading Chinese. The dragons descended upon the area now known as Ha Long Bay and began spitting out jewels and jade, which turned into islands, linking together to form a barrier against the invaders. If you describe ... read more