Two Rucksacks One Boy

It was an early start - well, up at 7 - to get ready for the bike tour I was under taking with my two friends Dan and Sarah. We loaded up my scooter and the guides bikes - Dan and Sarah were riding on the back of our two guides bikes - with our luggage and at around 8 o'clock and after saying goodbye to Alan we hopped on to our bikes and we were off! We stopped off at a temple on the way out of Nha Trang to have a look at a huge Buddha statue. On the out skirts of Nha Trang our guides stopped off at a family's house where they make rice paper - They burned the old disused kernels of the rice to heat up their ingredients which they then dry, roll out incredibly thin, and then put on bamboo mats to dry in the sun. We passed out of Nha Trang and after about an hour I felt my rear wheel lose grip - At first I thought the tyre had melted - that's what it felt like! - it turned out I had a flat tyre. So the group came to a halt and Lan -one of our guides -...

We arrived in Nha Trang at about 6 in the morning after a long night bus ride along some of the roughest roads I've experienced so far. At several points I was flung clear out of my seat and came down with a bump on to the person next to me. I was sharing the back of the bus with 4 other burly men which did NOT make for a comfortable ride! We (Me and Alan - not me and the Burly men) checked into a hotel and had a well earned nap! As Alan was due to leave for home in the next couple of days we decided to relax and have a bit of beach time, then he would fly to Ho Chi Minh city for his connecting flight home. On our first night it rained, and then it rained some more, and then it continued to rain - so much so that the street our hotel was on flooded within an hour and in places it was almost a foot and a half deep. The flooding clearly was not uncommon as all the building had their own flood defences.  Here Alan is climbing over the defences on our way to get some din...

We arrived at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hoi An on our motorbikes and immediately investigated a Tailors (one recommended by our motorbike guide). Hoi An is famous for it's tailoring and it literally has hundreds of them. After looking through some folders filled with costume designs taken from magazines we decided to mull over what we wanted and to check into our hotel, with that done we went to get some dinner! Some wine with our dinner - we thought we deserved a reward  after surviving the bike tour in one piece! The next day we checked out another tailors that Alan had been recommended by friends, it wasn't long before we were all getting measured up! It was a long day running between tailors and attending fittings, but we supplemented the days activities with an excellent cooking course by Gioan restaurant. Run by two sisters the course is somewhere between a musical and a cooking lesson, both sisters love singing about EVERYTHING!  ...

We'd heard a lot of horror stories about trips to Halong Bay so we took the advice of the majority of people we'd met and joined the Castaway tour of Halong Bay booked through our hostel. The tour included 2 nights on a private island sleeping in huts and a couple of activities thrown in too....  Setting off into Halong Bay On the boat heading past one of the floating villages. Jumping off the boat for a swim! Going for a kayak round our island. Giving wake boarding a go! Almost up! That's more like it! Alan struggling! Alan fared much better at climbing!