Hi guys,

First of all, xin chào from Cat Ba Island, Vietnam! Quite a bit has gone down since our last post! After three boiling and kind of boring days in Bangkok, we managed to get our Vietnam visas (phew!). In order to fill time, Joe had his first ever Massaman curry; we ate scorpion, which kind of tasted like chicken skin, kind of like seaweed, and kind of like sick (awesome!); we went down to Chinatown, which turned out to be the REAL Chinatown and not the touristy one that was in the guidebook – cool! After wandering through stalls selling delights such as shark fin (£1,000 a pop), whole dried duck, and vaccum packed pig’s face (now we know where they’re getting all their food from on Nothing to Declare), we managed to find a local restaurant where we had an amazing meal of roasted duck noodles and the best chicken spring rolls each of us had ever eaten. Big thumbs up for REAL Chinatown, Bangkok!

Another exciting moment was when Laurence, Sophia’s twin, waltzed through the door of our hostel dorm! He’s in Asia with two friends for a similar amount of time, and was recommended our hostel by Sophia – it was surreal to see a familiar face in such a removed environment! We took Laurence & co out onto the road for Massaman and massage (just kidding – only a Massaman!)

With our visa and flight sorted we were pretty confident that our journey from Bangkok to Hanoi would be plain sailing. We planned to sleep in Don Muaeng airport, which left us plenty of time to arrive and check in, no problemo… We got in a taxi and asked for Don Mueang airport, please. After about a minute’s drive he said “Suvarnabhumi airport”, so we said “No. Don Mueang airport.” So he said “Ok, ok.” After a couple of miles more, we saw signposts to Suvarnabhumi. We said, “No no, not Suvarnabhumi!”; the journey continued in pretty much the same vein before we finally managed to get him to turn around and go back through the tolls we’d just paid to go to the correct airport. By this time, we were pretty thankful that he couldn’t speak our language! We arrived pretty disgruntled and spent quite a cross and uncomfortable night on the floor – lovely!

Our moods changed the next day upon meeting Sophia in arrivals at Hanoi airport! We arrived at the hostel to discover that it was more of a plush hotel, complete with carp pond and tv/pool room; the beds were, to quote Sophia, ‘like honeymoon beds’, except that they were in fact still bunk beds – we really couldn’t believe our luck! For any future Vietnam backpackers, the hostel is called May De Ville, and we give it 5 stars! Hanoi itself is just as mental as it’s reputed as being! It’s almost impossible to describe the utter chaos of the roads – there are rarely traffic lights at cross roads, and most bikers beep their way through every situation; if you’re not alert at every moment, you WILL die. We managed to make it to some sights, but the greatest moment of Hanoi had to be watching Murray win the Wimbledon final! We agreed to split from Hanoi pretty quickly, and arranged a trip to Halong Bay via Cat Ba Island. Cat Ba Island, we found, is a cross between Jurassic Park and Asian Blackpool – imagine that! (You won’t have to, we have pictures). Although slightly underwhelmed at first, we knew that we wanted to explore the bay from Cat Ba Island to avoid the $150 rip-off bay tour from Halong City on the mainland. So we crossed our fingers and booked on to a group tour for the following day, that included a tour of the limestone islands by boat, kayaking in the national park, lunch, a trip to Monkey Island, and snorkelling. When we got there in the morning, we were told that we were the only people that booked on, and that there was no driver for our boat. We feared the worst, but he went on to say that we would have to take a small fishing boat instead, just the four of us- result. We had a fantastic day today exploring the islands; we were able to do everything we were promised, with no one else to look silly in front of! After kayaking and snorkelling in the national park, our driver took us to a local fishing village on the water, (if you’ve seen it, it was like Beasts of the Southern Wild), where we were given a HUGE lunch of seafood, fish, rice and vegetables. Not entirely sure when we would eat properly again, we cleaned up – so delicious! We also got a tour of their floating home, under which they kept a 50+kg pet grouper; not sure why, but I guess it’s like the equivalent of a St Bernard!

After a (much needed) great excursion, we’re currently sitting on the patio outside our dorm to write this. We’re leaving Cat Ba tomorrow afternoon to begin the biggest leg of our journey (16 hour sleeper bus) to Hue. If you fancy praying for our sanity/sending good vibes, we’d really appreciate it!

Pictures will go up when we get to Hue – promise!

Sending good vibes back to you

Ellen, Sophia, Brad and Joe

P.s. For all Brian lovers – he is currently in a locker in our dorm (there are some shifty travellers here), but he’s well and enjoying the trip so far, although finding it slightly more taxing as he’s a bit older!