The Rock Long Rock Hard Halong Bay Tour

To finish off our trip to Vietnam, James and I signed ourselves up for the Rock Long Rock Hard Halong Bay Tour, a cruise around the scenic shores of Northern Vietnam run by the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel.  Well, I say cruise.  It ended up being more of a booze-cruise, but one of our highlights so far, by a long long way.  The tour gave us a chance to meet up with a lot of backpackers our age from all over the world.  We made friends from England, Ireland, Sweeden, Denmark, Germany, America and Canada to name but a few countries.

The tour itself was amazing.  For the first day and night, we spent our time on a beautiful traditional oriental ship.  We went swimming in the sea, dived off the boat, and even went kayaking to nearby caves.  When we kayaked back to the ship, it was dark.  The water was full of luminescent phosphorus, so as we paddled, the water around the paddles glowed, it was something else!  The majority of the time spent on the boat was spent playing drinking games (as you can see above), so we both have a lot to bring home.  The whole night was crazy, with some insane forefits and a shocking amount of alcohol consumption, but considering nobody knew each other, everyone got on so so well.  The whole crowd were just there to have a good time, which made making friends easy.

The second day and night, we stayed on a private deserted beach called 'Castaway Island', which was equally as fun as the day before!  James and I went rock climbing (one of the few times we were actually sober whilst on the tour) on the karst cliffs the protrude from the sea everywhere you look, so that was good fun and got the heart pumping.  We also played beach volleyball and countless more drinking games.  Also, late in the night (the remainder of this paragraph contains adult material) we all went skinny dipping in the sea, which was a great laugh, and made especially fun what with the glowing phosphorus in the water.  Magical!

Castaway Island

Sadly, on the morning of the third day, we had to return to Hanoi, having had one of the greatest times of our lives.  We made great friends on the trip and we'll never forget it... not even if we wanted to.

Some of the closest friends we made on the trip were Anna, Elie and David (or Gibsy as he became to be known).  We spent the next few days in Hanoi together, exploring the town and going out at night.  Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Gibsy, but we hope to meet up with him again in Bangkok in a few weeks time.  As for the girls, we are due to meet them here in Laos in a few hours.  It's great to meet people the same age as us with similar interests and senses of humour.  Also, who we can meet up with here, and hopefully back at home.

Louis, Anna, David, James, Elie

We'll be back with a post on  Laos shortly.  Until then, cheerio.

Saigon to Hoi An - The Long Way Round

As many of you may know already, James and I have now completed our motorcycle adventure.  Due to shortness of time and for the physical state of our behinds, we have opted to cease in the beautiful town of Hoi An.  It has been a great journey and we did not see a single Westerner until our last day.  We know a total of three Vietnamese words: 'Hello', 'Thankyou' and 'Beef'.  As you can imagine, this made the whole endeavour a whole lot more exciting.

I am saddened to report that we have now parted from our bikes Fergus and Finnegan, selling them for 40% of their original price.  We shall miss them dearly, if they had such intelligence, we would try and stay in contact, but we have agreed that any efforts would be futile (again, too much of a language barrier).

Hoi An is a beautiful place on the central coast of Vietnam.  It is an old port town, full of French architecture with strong influences from China and Japan.  By night, the town is illuminated by Chinese lanterns, both through the streets and floating on the river that bisects the settlement.  We have been very happy spending that last few days here and the surroundings do not cease to enchant us.  Today we have visited the 'Ancient Town' and discovered the herritage of such a place.  We had a traditional Vietnamese tea and observed the flood measure in a museum that informed us that the town has regularly become immersed in water over a metre deep in recent years.  Finger crossed our feet will stay dry!

James again:
Hey guys, I thought I would write another passage seeing as though we have ended our epic biking session. It will be nice to no longer be the 'Whities' (this isn't what they call us but we think they have a similar nickname to this in Vietnamese), and also to know what we are ordering when we visit resauraunts. We have already found our new local and go there for cheap breakfast and lunch everyday, but we venture to the higher end of the market for dinner. Sometimes we pay up to as much as 2 pounds for dinner. Personally to me that is extortionate, but they have to earn their bread and butter somehow.

Hoi An has already been placed high in my list of top places we have visited. The character has clearly been retained from the many years it has stood, and from the many cultures that have passed through the town, but it still bustles and hasn't lost its energy. It will a sad time when we have to leave in a couple of days, but bring on Hanoi!

Motorbiking So Far

Hello World, we thought we'd give you an update on the biking so far.  Since we purchased our bikes, we have travelled over 700km.  Needless to say we are already a hell of a lot more confident than when we first shakily rode through Ho Chi Minh City.

Firstly, we headed down towards the Mekong Delta, a lush green province South of Ho Chi Minh.  We stayed here a few nights, moving around the different towns and cities.  The highlights of our stay here were a boat trip, where we were taken around many floating markets and met lots of friendly locals who politely pretended to understand what we were saying, and a homestay, where we spent a night in a Vietnamese family's home, on a peaceful river island.  It was a treat falling asleep to the sound of the flowing water as oppsed to our usual fight to get to sleep with all the car horns.

The home we stayed in.

The two of us are now making our way to Hoi An, a town on the Central Coast of Vietnam, we travel on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  We tend to ride just over 100km per day, which takes us between three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half hours on average, including petrol stops and lunch stops.  The scenery is absolutely beautiful, it is what you'd expect of rural Italy, with pine trees, and lime groves, with some great aromas.  The roads snake through the countryside and up and down mountains, it truly is breathtaking.  The whole experience is great fun, although hard, tiring work.  It is an adventure stopping to eat, and stopping at hotels, because the area we are in isn't well travelled by tourists, so virtually nobody speaks any English, and we speak even less Vietnamese, but the people are so friendly that everything seems to work out just fine.  We do however feel a little sorry for the owners of hotels when we turn up with our faces coated in dirt and dust.

This photograph does the view NO justice

We expect to arrive on Hoi An within the next five days, until then, we will keep on travelling North along these beatiful roads.  Be warned though, we are both beginning to consider buying motorbikes when we get home, so the roads of Sussex may not be as safe as they are now!

Half Way at Ho Chi Minh

Today we have been travelling for sixty days.  This means that we are exactly half way through our adventure across South East Asia.  We have been talking a lot about the amazing experiences we've had so far, the people we have met, and the awesome things that are yet to happen.  I think it's safe to say that we are just as excited now as when we left home!

Now, to the point, today is very special for another reason.  We have two new members to our team, who will help us travel North through Vietnam.  I'd like to introduce you all to... the Hondas!

James' Badass Bike

Louis' Badass Bike

Tomorrow, we plan to leave Ho Chi Minh City, where we have been staying for the last couple of nights, and head towards the Mekong Delta, which is renowned for it natural beauty.  It is so exciting to know that for the next three weeks, we can go wherever we like, at our own pace.  We have a map, we have bungee cords, we have petrol,  we are ready to go!  Wish us luck, we will keep you posted!

This is James here. Thought I'd input as Louis has been doing all the hard work on this blog and I'm getting credit for it without doing anything. So here goes...

We have been away exactly sixty days out of one hundred and twenty and there have been many culture shocks during that time. I think today has been one of the scariest days personally, as we haven't exactly ever driven proper motorbikes before and yet we are now proud owners of two beautiful(ish), powerful(ish), motorcycles. And we plan to drive them in the busiest city in most of the world. However, we have come this far and we are still alive, so we can't be doing everything wrong, so these next few weeks are going to be pretty exciting as I think Louis will agree.

Next stop, Hanoi!