Armed with bungee chords, we packed our bags onto our newly acquired (though far from new) motorcycles (an hour-long endeavour) and got heavily dressed in the sweltering heat, in order to both not get sunburned and be decently protected on the road. Joe, our saviour, guided us through Da Nang (and its huge roundabouts and heavy traffic) and got us onto the mountain road that would take us to our first stop, Prau. We knew we had about 40 km left and about 2 and a half hours before night would fall, but nothing prepared us for the road ahead. Beautiful views, winding hair-pin turns, and endless climbs and descents. However, what this translated into for us was a very sharp learning curve. Learning our bikes (and how to ride them), and trying to find the ... read more

Fellow travelers agree, even on the road, sometimes you need a break. After getting back to Ninh Binh (Sadie, trying to outsmart the bus driver, ended up getting us screwed over, so we had to walk about 4 km to the station this time, with all our gear) we caught the train leaving shortly after for Dong Hoi. The train ride was a long 9 hours, and in the rush to catch a train that we wouldn't have to sleep on, we neglegted to ask for anything better than hard seats. And when they say hard, they mean it. It was everything we expected: sticky, uncomfortable, hot and dirty, but we loved it. Everyone was really friendly, we met a charming mother and daughter and managed to talk to them for a while (a combination of ... read more

The time had finally come for Sadie to realise her dream of going to Ha Long Bay! We were still in culture shock and getting our bearings in Hanoi, so we ended up booking a tour through our hotel, in order to avoid all the numerous scams but mostly having to deal with trying to second guess everyone's offers and mistrusting people just out of principle. We must say we have found people to be really helpful and trustworthy in general, but having read so many horror stories we (and pretty much all other travelers we meet) were trying to work out what the reality is as far as being a Western tourist in Vietnam goes. We met Emily, a nice and funny English girl travelling on her own, at our hotel, and we decided to ... read more

After years of fantasizing and saving up, our travels finally begin! We managed to get just enough of a taste of winter before we left so Øyvind would have something to remember during our trip ;) And off we went! Our route was Oslo-Copenhagen-London-Hong Kong-Hanoi. To any of you smart-alecs who are wondering why not just fly Oslo-London, it made the whole trip almost twice as expensive. Go figure. Airfare is something Sadie has gotten a degree in recently, though it is sadly far from an exact science... Additional resctrictions included our life-long vow NEVER to fly Lufthansa again and to try and not have to use Munich or Frankfurt as a connection. Yes, it really has been that bad in the past... All our connections were tight, so we knew we were in for a ... read more

Our departure date is getting closer! We don't actually have our tickets yet (our deadline is next tuesday, as it seems that tuesdays have been the cheapest arifare days... hope the waiting pays off!) but it looks like we will be leaving between october 30th and november 1st. And that means there is much to do! And one of the things that was highest up on Sadie's list was finishing work and (finally) quitting her extra-casting job at Hotel Cæsar, Scandinavia's longest running drama series. So now that at least one of us is unemployed, the packing and shopping and organizing can begin! And of course there are the prerequisite parties to be had. First on the list was Thanksgiving, a tradition we started only last year but that we had to repeat before we left ... read more