24th April 2010 The train journey from Lao Cai to Ha Noi last night was a nightmare and neither of us slept a great deal. Luckily we shared a cabin with an Australian couple who were really nice and we chatted with them for a while before turning in, but once the lights were out, the lurching movement of the train and the smells of smoke coming from the toilet didn’t help with sleeping. We arrived in Ha Noi pretty tired. ...
23rd April 2010 It turned out to be a good job that we had bought our North Face coats yesterday, this morning we awoke to torrential rain and a thunderstorm. We were lucky to have done our trek yesterday and that we were going back to Ha Noi later this evening. With such dreadful weather, there was no rush to go out, so we spent a good part of the morning chatting with our Israeli friends Batya and Nir in reception. They have given us some great information and recommendations for Cambodia, Laos and Japan all of which they have visited recently. ...
19th April 2010 Typically, today was the first day of sunshine on our Halong Bay trip. We awoke on our island paradise and don’t get me wrong, it was a paradise setting, even if we were woken up at 6.45am with the builders starting work for the day. We weren’t even allowed a peaceful breakfast, with drills and saw benches going. The boat to transfer us back to Cat Ba island arrived around 9am, so we all loaded our kit back onto the boat and made the short crossing back to Cat Ba Island. We were met by the minibus which took us back across the island to where we boarded a bigger junk which would take us back to Ha Long City. ...
20th April 2010 The main event for today was to catch the train to Sapa, a small town way up in the mountains in the North of Vietnam. However the train wasn’t until 8:30 this evening, so we had most of the day for getting in some more sight-seeing in Ha Noi. Despite having had a number of days here last week, we still hadn’t made it to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum whilst it was open - it is only open in the mornings, and not every day of the week. As this was something we wanted to do, we made a point of getting up early this morning and heading straight over there after a quick breakfast. ...