My first real day with the Intrepid tour started with a breakfast at a restaurant staffed by street kids (sort of like Jamie Oliver’s one but without all the media attention and backing). The service was really nice and the food was gorgeous. Saying that, all the food in Vietnam is gorgeous, you could give a newspaper to a Vietnamese chef and you’d be tempted to lick the plate.

An hour later we where on the road for a four hour ride to Ha Long Bay for our little mini cruise aboard a Junk boat. Ha Long bay is a stretch of water with over 2000 little limestone islands dotted everywhere. The postcards and travel agents make it sound so secluded and romantic, the truth is that of the four million tourists that visit Vietnam each year over two million of them visit Ha Long Bay and sometimes it felt like they all chose to visit on the same day we did. Aboard we had lunch and sat around on the top deck admiring the view for a few hours before we were dropped off at the entrance to some limestone caves. The cave’s where quite interesting, lots of stalactites and stalagmites that if you squint hard enough might bare a slight resemblance to an animal.

That evening a few of us had a swim and got into a little bit of trouble for jumping in from the top deck of the boat which was about 25ft high before dinner followed by many hours of cards.

It took most of the morning to get back to Hanoi where we had the afternoon to do what we wanted. I joined a few people for a quick look around the Hanoi Hilton (the prison where a lot of POW’s where kept including presidential loser John McCain). It was all very interesting, but there seemed to be a lot of propaganda especially about how the American pilots were treated. I also had to go to the post office to send a few xmas presents back home which turned out to be a little complicated since I didn’t have a Vietnamese address and had to fill in 5 different forms.

After another amazing dinner we met up again at the hotel to catch the overnight train down to Hue (pronounced h’way as in “h’way the lads”). The 4 bed sleeper compartments where a little prison cell like, but not too uncomfortable and didn’t stop me sleeping.

Crossing a road in Hanoi

• Wait until the road you are going to cross is mostly mopeds and fewer cars.
• Take a deep breath and step off the curb (avoiding the river of god knows what in the gutter)
• Keep a constant pace, don’t speed up or slow down no matter what happens, just let the traffic deal with you.
• Arrive at the other side and change your underwear.

I arrived in Hanoi from a very brief overnight stay in Singapore. I ‘d love to write all about Singapore, but I was feeling really rough and all I really saw was the inside of the 20 bed prison like dorm I was staying in. I was up at 5am (again for the second day running) to catch my flight to Hanoi.

Still feeling quite bad I missed out on the Singapore airlines plane food (which actually looked quite tasty) and arrived in Hanoi some time in mid afternoon. I was bundled into a tiny minibus which for US$4 will take you the hours drive from the airport to anywhere in the city. The drive from the airport was terrifying, I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of times a moped nearly ended up under our wheels, you also soon get used to the sound of horns. Once at the hostel I went back to bed for a few hours then decided I should make an effort and go for a walk, but roads at night made me think again and I only ended up walking around the block.

The next day I was determined to see more of the city so I followed other people until I got the hang of the road crossing thing. I got ripped of buying a photocopied lonely planet guide book (that smells of fish), I thought I was paying £1 for it when I actually paid £10. Got a much better grasp of the exchange rate now (around 25,000 dong to the pound).

All the streets in old town Hanoi have a different theme: silk street, toy street comb street, clam worm street etc. each selling exactly what it say on the tin. This didn’t make it any easier to find my way around, I managed to get lost for about 2 hours after I popped out to the supermarket for shower gel.

I spent the rest of the day at the Hoan Kiem Lake getting hassled by the street touts who try and sell you anything they can and once they get up close and out of earshot of anyone else they offer a whole different range of products (I’m sure you can guess).

I also watched the water puppet show which turned out to be really funny. Seven puppeteers stand waist deep in a very smelly green pool and operate puppets from behind a screen whilst a live band plays along, I don’t think there was much of a plot to the storey, but it was really enjoyable.

I’ve met up with the guys I’ll be spending the next few weeks with on the first of my tours. They all seem nice enough, there’s 2 young Australian couples, an Australian mother and daughter, an American mother and Daughter and a family of Americans. We all went out for quite a posh Vietnamese dinner which came to all of £4

Next stop is Hanlong Bay which looks amazing from the photo’s I’ve seen. Hopefully I’ll get a couple of good HDR’s.