Feeling rather emotional today as we prepare to say bye bye both to Vietnam and to Jade and Rob, who are heading West to Laos while we go North to China. The last month has been absolutely brilliant fun thanks to the great company, the million games of spades we’ve played (always in completely good humour and [...]

Over the past six weeks, Vietnam has continually stunned us with its unbelievably diverse, colourful scenery. Despite thirty years of war and decades of lax governmental conservation laws, it is one of the most naturally beautiful countries I’ve ever visited, and the northern mountains, our current location, are the icing on the cake.

Here’s some photos from our short jolly to Ha Long Bay. We spent a few days on a boat cruising amongst the karsks, caves and floating villages, got drunk on Vodka that was cheaper than water, played silly drinking games with fellow travellers, swam in the sea (until the jellyfish closed in) and hiked [...]

Our overnight bus from Dong Hoi dumped us at 4am by the side of Highway 1 in Ninh Binh – a rather non-descript town two hours south of Hanoi.  We’re visiting Ninh Binh as it’s the closest town to the Cuc Phuong national park, a huge patch of tropical rainforest in a valley of limestone [...]

Hue is definitely the most Francophile city we’ve seen in Vietnam, but it also shares one charming characteristic with Manchester – it sees a higher annual rainfall than anywhere else in the country. So after a laid back few days there, with a dodgy weather forecast looming, we decided to head North across the demilitarised [...]

After an exhausting four days of, erm, shopping in Hoi An we decided to recharge our batteries and our credit cards with a brief stop at China Beach, since it’s only 18km away on the coastal road to Danang. It turned out to be a great decision and a one night stop over turned into [...]

I apologise for the lame blog title.  Even after two beers and a mojito (in a fetching little courtyard under a bamboo tree – how very Graham Greene)  neither Jeannie or I could come up with anything better.
I can’t believe it’s nine days since we blogged last – we’ve covered a lot of Vietnam since [...]

We’re very gloomy this morning as we prepare to leave the little cocoon of luxury we’ve been nestled in for the past week and return to the world of cold showers and hard matresses. We arrived in Vietnam last Sunday and proceeded directly to Saigon to meet my old dears (mum and grandma), who’d just arrived [...]

Just a quickie – our map is now working again – http://www.jamespoyser.com/travels/our-map/