Northern Vietnam

The next stop in Vietnam was a city called Hue, where the Vietnamese royal family used to live. So... the first evening we had a "royal dinner" with drawing toothpicks to see who would be "king" and "queen" for the evening.

Well, Raquel managed to become queen and, as you can see, she took it all a bit too seriously, ordering us around and being a bit mean!!! (just kidding)

The next day, we went on a motorbike tour of the surrounding countryside, thankfully with "professional" drivers. Not that my driver managed to avoid running over a rather large dog... I thought we were going to crash for sure, but in the end the dog probably just ended up with a massive headache!!!

One of the stops was at a market area, with a tiny little museum where this wonderful old lady showed us how to use some local farming tools. Not a word of English, but she was amused to see this tall foreigner!!!

The next stop was an orphanage supported by the tour company. After a vegetarian lunch prepared by the Buddhist nuns, we got to play with the kids, some of whom wanted to ride on the shoulders of the tallest man they'd ever seen (so it seemed)

After Hue, we took the train for 10 hours, through the demilitarised zone, then went to a national park. By this point I'd come down with a cold, the first illness since August pretty much. So no photos from the park, as I stayed in the room all afternoon.

The next day though, we went to Halong Bay, one of the most beautiful places in the world, with almost 2000 little "karst islands", the limestone rocks just barely sticking out of the water sometimes. Beautiful...

So, not long now in Vietnam.... a day in Hanoi and it's off to Japan!!!