Where now?

Bali is definitely the place to chill out for a while. We arrived and headed straight to Senur where our accomodation had a lovely garden area and a quirky outside bathroom. Our first morning we were woken at 7:26am by an earthquake shaking the building around us. At a magnitude of 4.6, it was quite surreal but luckily no damage and by breakfast everyone was acting like nothing had happened. We spent a lovely day at the beach, lying in the sunshine and swimming in the sea. Since visiting the Harry Potter themed cafe in Hanoi we've been listening to the audio books, which are a great thing to have in your ear while you lie in the sunshine. Senur has a relatively new walkway which runs along the beach and is great for a wander along or a cycle. We were going to hire bikes but left it too late so just had a stroll instead. The tide goes out quite far exposing some excellent rock pools to explore in, we saw hundreds of starfish things, later found to be a species of Brittlestar. The ne...

Typhoon Yagi hit North Vietnam just over 2 weeks ago. We'd messaged ahead to our hostel in Hanoi to check we should still travel there and got the response that the Vietnamese capital had returned to normal. We flew to Haiphong and then got a bus to Hanoi and saw lots of effects of the storm along the way. So many trees down, some of them huge. Upon reaching Hanoi you could tell it was very much business as usual, with just regular newly sawn tree stumps along the streets.  Our hostel held a free walking tour which we went on the first morning in Hanoi. A lovely lady named Luna took us around the city showing us the highlights and adding useful facts about Vietnam and its culture. We went into the Ngoc Son Temple which is on lake Hoan Kiem. Inside they have 2 mummified Yangtze giant softshell turtles which used to live in the lake, one of them until 2016, and very weirdly they have their penis' displayed separately next to them, no longer connected.  Whilst by the lake we saw ...

  We've had a lovely Time in Hoi An, our original plan to just have a day wouldn't have been enough, especially as you need to be here in the evening to experience its magic. Our first evening we went a for a walk around and you naturally end up by the river. Every evening there's loads of boats with lanterns and people put small ones on to the water. Releasing a lantern is supposed to be for good fortune and love. It is a wonderful sight, although a bit worrying about what happens to them all. There's also groups about with very loud drums with dancers dressed as dragons which is fun to watch and pretty impressive.   We had a beach day the next day at An Bang Beach and the weather was perfect for it, although we did get a bit red even under a brolly all day. We've become very used to swimming in nice warm seas, I'm worried I'm going to unable to enter British seas when we return. The next day we'd booked ourselves on another cooking course, they're ...

We had a sleeper train to Da Nang so 12 hours in a 4 berth cabin with 2 Vietnamese strangers. It went OK, we both got some sleep but it's hard to tell how much. Here's Matt looking pretty snug! Our first full day in Da Nang we jumped on a bus to the Marble mountains, just south of the city. Altogether its 5 limestone peaks which you can go up to see caves and temples. It was really nice up there with great views and time to cool down in the caves. After, we headed back into the city and walked along the river to Downtown Da Nang, a sort of small theme park place. We wanted to do the big wheel once it had gone dark but for not much more money you could get an all inclusive ticket for the other rides, so we went on the roller coasters and the pirate ship too. The view from the top of the wheel was lovely at night. We also spent plenty of time at the beach during our time in Da Nang. I spent a long time one day watching a group of fishermen pull these huge nets into the shore, the...