On Sunday 31st, it was an early start for the next leg of the journey. We left the hotel at 5am, and were picked up by a pre-arranged tuk-tuk driver to get to the bus station for our bus to Vinh, in Vietnam. Whilst we wanted to go to Hanoi, there was no bus on a Sunday which would take us all the way. The next best option was to go to Vinh, and organise transport from there. We were acutely aware that Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, was coming up, and that transport was becoming booked up. This meant we'd managed to pre-book an overnight train from Vinh to Hanoi, in a 'soft seat’ (a reclining chair, the only option still available at the time of booking). The plan was to get across the border between Laos and Vietnam, get to Vinh, get some dinner, and get the train to Hanoi, arriving on Monday 1st February.

It was going to be a long day of travel . Our bus was due at 6am, and it arrived at 5.40am. Luckily we were there early. Our luggage was hoisted onto the roof of the large bus, and we climbed on board to find that it was in fact a sleeper bus – an overcrowded sleeper bus. This meant that there were almost flat beds, rather than seats, on upper and lower levels, plus mats on the floor and one of the upper levels, for extra passengers. Unfortunately for us, we were put at the very back of the bus. This meant that we didn’t have an individual seat, but were instead in a row of five seats, with three chaps who were helping to run the bus effectively. The very back of the bus was raised even higher, so we couldn’t sit upright, the space wasn’t big enough for us to stretch out fully, we couldn’t get off the bus without every other person getting off before us, and a broken air conditioning vent made it very cold where we were. On the plus side, the bus had blankets, there was room for our backpacks safely behind us, and it was early in the morning . We laid down to get some sleep, and were successful for about an hour, until more people were crammed onto the bus and ended up sat on our feet. The bus didn’t stop for toilet breaks, so we limited our fluid intake, and concentrated on enjoying lying down for hours at a time.

At about 11am, we arrived at the border crossing between Laos and Vietnam. We found a toilet, and commented on the number of trucks passing through the crossing, including ours, with branches on top. It looked like firewood, and we assumed it had something to do with Tet. Our first stop was the money exchange place, where the women attempted to short change us with our Laotian Kip to Vietnamese Dong. It is basically impossible to change Kip outside of Laos, so we had little choice but to change what money we had leftover. We argued with the ladies for a little while, as they did and re-did calculations which came up with a different amount of Dong each time. Eventually, we got an amount we were happy with and moved onto the next set of chaos, which was the Laos border out . It was a scrum. We were quite literally being elbowed out of the way by people, trying to get to the front of the ‘queue’ and to the windows, where the immigration officials sat. We got chatting to some Americans who were also surprised and annoyed at the behaviour of everyone else around us, so joined forces with the four of them and tried to stop people from pushing in front of us. We had some success but even when we told people to back off, they would circle around and somehow push their passports in to the officials, all the while physically barging us around. Whilst the room wasn’t large, the behaviour was completely unnecessary. We noticed that the passports were Vietnamese, not Laotian, and we figured that these were people returning home for Tet, and this was not symptomatic of the behaviour of the nice Laotian people we had met.

After being stamped out of Laos, we walked across a bridge to the Vietnamese immigration office. Here, we encountered more of the same shoving behaviour . This space was marginally larger, and with the Americans, we found a corner to stand in and protected our space. A couple of the Americans started getting ordered around by one of the apparent immigration officials, who was saying something about luggage that we couldn’t understand and eventually amounted to nothing. All of our passports were handed over, and it was time for Ken and Jayna to start worrying. Before we left the UK, one of only three visas we needed prior to entering a country was for Vietnam. However, since that time, the visa rules had changed and, as British nationals, we could now enter Vietnam for up to 15 days for free. So said the UK government website. Great, we thought, no visa fees to pay. However, we were worried that we’d missed some piece of crucial information, which required us to have still done at least some of the pre-visa requirements for members of other countries. We’d done nothing, other than show up. After quite a long time, and a lot of flicking through pages of our passports, we were given our stamped passports with no problems . We had our passports checked by officials outside of the immigration offices again. Amazed that it had worked, someone from our bus appeared and rushed us on towards our bus. After getting off the bus last, all of the pushing and shoving, and being the only foreigners on the bus, we were some of the last through immigration, unsurprisingly.

We got back into our ‘seats’ at the back of the bus, and contentedly giggled about how ridiculous the morning had been. With no ability to do anything else (like move, stretch, sit upright, watch a film, use the computer), we slept some more through the course of the afternoon. At some point, the bus started to empty, and we at least didn’t have people sat on our feet anymore. Towards the end, we changed for one of the actual sleeper seats, and found it was marginally more comfortable.

We arrived into Vinh at 8pm. Happy to get off the bus, we then had to wait 20 minutes for our luggage to come off the top of the bus, as the branches had higher priority . All this was in the rain, so we were a bit peeved. There were no toilets available, and as soon as we got our backpacks we set off in the direction of the train station, with the intention of getting some food along the way. Despite the rain, we were only too happy to walk after being cramped and laid down on the bus for so long. Our train was at 11pm, so we had plenty of time to get there. Unfortunately, we found no food joints on the way – at least, none that weren’t prominently displaying dead chickens outside of them – and stopped half way into a likely looking place. It was only serving drinks, so we ordered some beer and cocktails instead. After using the facilities we felt a lot better, and the drinks kept our spirits high. After a couple, we kept on going to the train station. On the way, we were accosted by the happiest (possibly drunk) youngsters, and invited into their shop. We picked up a bottle of wine and enjoyed the merriment, before arriving in good time at the station. Here, we found someone selling bread and someone selling boiled eggs, so enjoyed a veritable feast whilst we waited for the train . It was late, by an hour. We sat in the cold, drank wine, and at midnight, boarded the eight hour train to Hanoi. Phew.

The eight hour train managed to catch itself up, so it was only seven hours by the time we arrived into Hanoi on the morning of Monday 1st February. Feeling like we really could have done with that extra hours sleep, we were light headed and woozy when exiting the train. It hadn’t been the nicest of rides, so we were feeling the sleep deprivation keenly. After dodging the taxi drivers, we headed across the street to a coffee shop and bought delicious Vietnamese coffee to wake us up. We sat there for a good two hours, waking up and doing some planning. As mentioned, Tet was weighing heavily on our minds, and we wanted to get our onward travel sorted. Now that we were in Vietnam, buying train tickets would be a whole lot easier. We mapped out our 15 days in Vietnam and agreed on a couple of train tickets to buy, so went and did that there and then from the station opposite. We walked into the waiting area and took a ticket, but it wasn’t until our number was nearly due that someone told us to go into the next office. We considered this slightly dodgy but went with it. After waiting for a couple of other people to be served, we were indeed able to get our chosen tickets sorted there and then. Ideal.

Part of our reading of the Lonely Planet described Hanoi like some of the worst Indian cities; full of scams, dangers, pollution, dodgy taxi meters and pavements which existed, but couldn’t be used due to the street stalls and motorbikes parked on them . With our scam senses tingling, we set off for our hotel on foot. It wasn’t as bad as we imagined. (Remember – we imagined really terrible things after our time in India.) The pavements were unusable, and the traffic was heavy and dangerous. We were in no rush and so made the most of it, taking our time to notice things like the buckets of paper on fire, everywhere (more on that later), people on bikes carrying orange trees, and numerous birds in cages lining seemingly every street. It was chaotic but nowhere near Delhi or Kathmandu standards.

We arrived at our hotel, Hanoi Asia Guest House, and were still too early to check in. Our room wasn’t ready so we couldn’t check in (whilst we had turned up early in numerous places on our travels, this was actually the first time we’d not been able to check in straight away. Amazing really), but we could buy breakfast in the hotel. We had some more bread and eggs, and coffee, and went to book a day trip to Halong Bay with a highly recommended tour agency nearby . Highly recommended by Tripadvisor, that is. We found the offices address but the office wasn’t there, so we returned to our hotel. Now our room was ready, so we checked in, and booked the day trip with our hotel instead for the following day.

The hotel was nice, and it even had a lift. Our room was small but functional, with a hot shower, and it was pretty clean. The only downside was that the place felt damp, which we put down to the atmosphere, rather than being due to a fault with the building. We rested and relaxed for a couple of hours. Amazingly we managed not to nap, before taking a walk to nearby Hoan Kiem lake. Here, we saw people throwing goldfish into the water, in a way which made us concerned that the fish would simply die immediately from shock. We went into the temple on the lake, called the Temple of the Jade Mountain, to take in the surroundings. The temple immediately struck us as Taiwan-esque, which we guessed was the Chinese historical influence . We wandered around and took in the neatness of the place, and saw a giant stuffed turtle in a case. Apparently, there were others in the lake, or at least one other that had been photographed. It really was enormous.

We headed back out and continuing our walk around the lake. By now, it was getting dark, and we witnessed some locals coming out for their evening’s activity. This included things like older gentlemen, in suits, running backwards and not looking where they were going. It was pretty hilarious. We then saw lots of dead fish in the lake, not hilarious, and peeled off to find a nearby Loving Hut restaurant. We hadn’t been to one of them since Taiwan, so were excited to see the newly opened restaurant. It was fancy. Like, really fancy. The building was white and gilt and lit up spectacularly, and we were invited inside by people who accompanied us to the lift upstairs, to an equally fancy room. This was definitely in competition for the fanciest place we’d eaten on our travels . We had a hearty and tasty meal, full of vegan goodness, and slept early after our long travels.

On Tuesday 2nd, we had another early start. We took breakfast in our hotel, and waited to be picked up for our day trip to Halong Bay. We’d wanted to do an overnight trip around Halong Bay, to get away from the tourist crowds, but were put off by the very cold weather. It was still proving very cold at night time especially, and not that warm in the day, so that, plus limited time, meant we opted for a day trip instead. We knew it was going to be a long and tourist filled day, but considered this all part of the experience. Or something like that, anyway. The bus came and picked us up, and we napped, despite chappy running our tour talking at the people on the bus for quite some time. It took us four hours to reach the pier for Halong Bay, passing some uninspiring countryside along the way. We took a long break at a factory where paintings, sculptures and overpriced souvenirs were sold, ostensibly as a toilet break . Why a toilet break had to take half an hour was anyone’s guess. Then we stopped at an oyster farm, for which there was no excuse. Not willing to be taken to a gem shop in Agra, we waited outside in the cold and looked at Halong Bay in the distance.

In getting on the boat, we joined another bus load of people. We explained again that we were vegetarian, and various dishes started arriving at our table. We had to ask every time what they were to know whether we could eat them or not. Whilst the food was plentiful, it was salt filled and not good quality. As soon as we boarded and lunch was served, the boat had started sailing, so we ate as quickly as we could muster and headed up to the top deck to take in the surroundings. It immediately made us think of Milford Sound in New Zealand, though less glacial, less dramatic and less filled with wildlife. Instead, we saw many, many boats doing the same trip we were doing. Occasionally we would be asked to go downstairs for no apparent reason, and presently we arrived at a dock, where we were told to disembark . This done, we were listening to a briefing from the other tour guide, when we realised that our tour guide had slipped into the roped off area with half of the people on our bus, to get them into rowing boats. Apparently, this was where we could take a rowing boat or a canoe into some caves and around some of the karst formations – along with about 300 other people at the same time. We tried to follow our guide in and were told to stop by some others. We tried to explain that our guide had gone on ahead without us and were simply shouted at by people, for reasons we didn’t understand. When the crowd got too much we simply slipped on in anyway, found our guide, and gave him some sh*t about leaving us behind with no information at all. He tried to get us into a canoe, but seeing the chaos at the cave entrances, and the puddles in the canoes, we declined and opted to get into a row boat with another couple who had also been left behind, Kelly and Clemence. They were a lovely couple, from Vietnam and Germany respectively, living in Cambridge and moving to San Francisco. We spent most of our time on the row boat talking to them instead of paying attention to the scenery and the chaos around us. It was really badly organised, and we had a big jam up at the entrances to the two places we visited. We joked with Kelly and Clemence, were late back to the boat, and felt unrepentant about this.

Again, we were told to stay downstairs before heading upstairs anyway . We asked Kelly about the burning paper and the fish thrown into the lake in Hanoi. Kelly told us that in the run up to Tet, the kitchen God goes to heaven on a fish, stays there for a week and tells all the other Gods how you have behaved during the past year. The fish in the lake were to help the kitchen God to get to heaven, and the burning paper was to appease the kitchen God. So now we knew.

Next, we disembarked at a cave, called Dong Thien Cung. Our guide had told us that we would be walking over one of the thousands of islands in the bay, he did not mention that this would be by going through a cave, cutting across the island. Like with the canoeing, there were hundreds of other people doing the same thing. The walk was brief and not challenging. The scenery was nice, but we’ve seen nicer caves.

Back on board, the scenery from on top of the boat was again quite spectacular, and the sun put in an appearance just at the end of our trip, lighting up the karst scenery nicely . We saw some raptors overhead, and some of them were fishing. Generally we enjoyed the scenery and company, and complained a bit about the organisation of the day.

After less than three hours on board, less than promised, we were back at the dock and shepherded onto the bus again. On the way back, we stopped once for half an hour, at an extremely expensive souvenir shop, so that we could use the toilet. We finally made it back to Hanoi at 8.30pm, more than 13 hours after we set off. Once again, we were relieved to be off the bus. We headed to a different vegetarian restaurant as described by Happy Cow, but found that this had changed into a vegetarian friendly restaurant. We ate there anyway, and had a nice meal in pleasant surroundings.

On Wednesday 3rd, we checked out of our hotel and left them with our big bags. We took a taxi to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, and got ripped off by the taxi driver in the process . The Lonely Planet warned us of speeded up meters, and his certainly was. We tried arguing but to no avail, and left grumpily to join the queue to see Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh, famous revolutionary leader in Vietnam, had been embalmed and was on display in his mausoleum. On a previous holiday to Russia, we had been to see Lenin in his mausoleum in the Red Square. It seemed only right that we go to see another infamous Communist leader, on display many years after his death. Plus it suited our morbid tendencies. The queue to get into the mausoleum was large, and we were worried that we wouldn’t be successful. We needn’t have worried; it appeared that large amounts of people were let in at a time, and then led around the grounds inside in orderly queues to reach the mausoleum itself. There were no bags allowed inside, and no cameras allowed inside the mausoleum, so we had to drop off our belongings in two different baggage storage areas. Otherwise, soon we were entering into Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum which bore a striking resemblance to Lenin’s, inside and out . The main difference was the Russians were more strict about the etiquette rules (no hats, no talking, no running, no whispering, no stopping, no hands in pockets, no smiling), and to get to Lenin, you went downstairs and then back upstairs to where he lay. With Ho Chi Minh, some people were told off for talking but whispering was tolerated, and we walked upstairs to see him in his casket. Their poses in death were similar, with hands visible, reclined, looking a bit plastic, in a casket with thick glass surrounding it, wearing black. Apparently Ho Chi Minh goes to Russia for two months every year for maintenance, whereas Lenin gets wiped down twice a week. Yikes.

Satisfied, we collected the camera, and took pictures of the outside where the rules about where people were allowed to stand were somewhat arbitrarily enforced. Without a lot of time left, we hurried off into the next area, which contained the presidential palace, a nice lake, the mango grove walk, Ho Chi Minh’s stilt house, fountains, one pillar temple, and a museum . We didn’t have time for the museum as the place was due to shut, so collected the bag and went on our way.

We stopped for coffee into a place across the road, and played with the owners very cute pugs. It turned out the owner was from Thailand, so we got to use our stock phrases of hello and thank you in Thai. The television was on, and it appeared that one of main news articles was about overcrowding on the sleeper buses, with people even sleeping in the luggage compartment underneath the bus.

Next we headed in the general direction of lunch at a different Loving Hut, stopping off on the way at a small park by a river. We had fun with the Hanoi heart sign (similar to ‘I heart Mockba’ in Moscow) and sat in the peace and quiet for a few minutes, before heading back into the melee of the city. Lunch at the Loving Hut was okay, though a bit salty, and we headed to the Imperial Citadel for our next stop.

The Imperial Citadel was an area of historical importance, where buildings were built on top of buildings over many centuries, and excavations were uncovering the past. It was added to the World Heritage list in 2010. There was the Hanoi Flag Tower, access to which was seemingly not allowed. The South Gate building was pretty and colourful. In front of it were many bonsai type trees in a variety of pots, which was very peaceful . We had a look at these areas, and the excavations next door and behind the gate. These were uncovering foundations from buildings over 1400 years old. We took in a kind of temple structure, complete with giant drum and a jade turtle, plus relics and dragons lining staircases. Next was a building of importance during the Vietnam-American war, with thick walls, intelligence files, desks for meetings and taking tea, and an underground bunker down 44 steps with thick metal doors. Spooky. The final building, called the Princess Pagoda, dated from the 1800s, and was something to do with a harem. It had a small shrine at the top. We walked back out of the complex, via the other side so we could peer into the Military Museum’s collection of Vietnam-American and Indochina war machines. All in all, the Imperial Citadel was a strange mish-mash of things. A leaflet explaining what was what would have been helpful. On the way out, we noticed that the security men were drinking three litre box wine.

Next we stopped for coffee, and saw a statue of Lenin across the street. We also saw a cup celebrating achievement at something, called Bac Son Monument, perfectly in line with Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. We started getting bother from people trying to sell us things, and wanting to get us on their motorbikes. We set off back to the hotel, but unfortunately Maps.Me considered that we could pass through a military complex on the way. We couldn’t. When figuring this out, from across the road a military man was blowing his whistle at us and indicating for us to move on. Whilst circumnavigating the, as it turned out, large, military complex, other military men said hello and wished us a happy new year.

We eventually made it back to the hotel, and continued with some much needed research in the hotel, making use of the free wifi. We used the time to work out which trains we were going to take next, as Tet was making transport difficult for us. We collected our belongings, said thank you and goodbye to the nice people on reception, and took a taxi to the train station. This one did not overcharge us, hooray! We got some dinner at another fancy vegetarian restaurant around the corner from the station, and made it back to the station in good time for our next train. This was an overnight train to our next destination – Hue!