Sweating it out in Vietnam

We flew into a very hot Hanoi (38-40 degrees centigrade, with about 80% humidity, swedish sauna style; the BBC describes the 'Discomfort from heat and humidity' as 'Extreme', err, yeap!) and had a couple of nights trying to get used to it. We haven't. We then headed on a bus-boat-bus trip to Cat Ba Island. We had two nights there including a full day trip round Halong Bay. We got stung for our trip. We'd haggled hard but when the boat turned up it wasn't what we had seen in the brochure! (Usual SE Asia stuff) We had a wicked day with some frenchies and a couple of Aussies anyway. We got our revenge though as we only paid a deposit and when we got back no-one wanted the rest of our money so we got a bargain in the end.

From here we got a bus-boat-bus trip to Ninh Bin with a bunch of other tourists who we ended up having dinner and beers with for the rest of the day. We had a day out on a couple of motorbike taxis and then headed down to Hue on an over night bus. It wasn't as bad as we were expecting and we're now in Hoi An. I've just been measured up for a suit and shirt for the wedding and I'll get to try it all on tomorrow! Claire is still deciding what she would like...

Here's a few piccies of the last week:

Claire's snazzy new multi-purpose brolly getting an outing in Hue. It has saved us from frying a few times already but we haven't had any rain since we bought it... yet!


It's pretty amazing what you can get on the back of a motorbike. I tried to get a photo of three bikes with what looked like industrial sized air conditioning tubes on the back but it didn't come out. :(


A view from the entrance of a cave in Halong Bay.


Me sweating it out under a Cat Ba sunset.