Gonna try and get through a written update...

2 cool things that we did in Nha Trang just before I left were snake eating and a boat trip. Snake eating first... we were all in Guava bar one night when the manager drunkenly said we should all eat snake for lunch the next day! We were all pretty drunk too so said yes, and he made a call to his friend who owns a restaurant. The next morning the people from the restaurant went out into the countryside and caught 2 snakes for us and come noon we were staring at them in their cages in the restaurant! One was poisonous and the other wasn't but neither were endangered. They brought the first snake out, the poisonous one, held by its head. They took a knife, slitting it open, then took out the heart and the liver. The heart continues to beat for 15 minutes! The blood was collected in a bottle and mixed with rice wine. The process was repeated with the second snake. To get us underway, 2 people downed the (still beating) heart in a shot of blood and this was followed by everyone else downing a shot of blood. We were then fed a snake feast, consisting of: snake fried rice, fried snake skin, snake soup, BBQ snake, snake eggs (one of them was pregnant) and everyones favourite, snake meat balls. All the while we had to down shots of snakes blood. Then when we had finished we all had to down a shot of the snake bile which is supposed to help digest all the snake inside you. I didn't really enjoy any of the tastes, but definately enjoyed the experience!

And the boat trip... a lot of the people living in Nha Trang were working for the dive shops there, and one day we decided we should do some kind of trip. So we talked to the diving company and set up a deal for 12 of us to take out their boat overnight. We set sail when they came back from their days diving at 2.30pm, anchoring about an hour out at one of the dive sites. We did some snorkelling and one of the locals on the boat showed me and Stu 2 underwater caves which we swam through. There were lots of fish in the cave and it was a really cool feeling swimming through it 9m deep just holding your breath! After that we swam over to an island and climbed up the little hill, then back to the boat for jumping off the top etc. Once we'd watched the sunset, myself and 5 others set up for a night dive. I jumped in the water from the top of the boat with all my gear on! Once back on the boat we looked for somewhere to anchor overnight and went to a fishing village. But when we got there there were tens of dogs who all went crazy so we didn't stay long and anchored in the middle of the sea somewhere. Then we set up two BBQ's and cooked and ate as much as we could! We started drinking too, then played some drinking games before going for a night snorkel and then sleep. We were up early the next morning as the boat had to be back ready for the next days divers at 6am! When we woke the fishing boats were out, letting down their nets in big circles. Twice we found ourselves in the middle of these circles and both times JUST made it out, once missing hitting the fishing boat by no more than a metre! We were really lucky to be able to do the trip as it's something nobody else can do and something I probably won't have the chance to do again.

After leaving I went to Hoi An which you've already heard about and seen the pictures (today I've got the same throat infection I had then so am back on antibiotics) :-( After Hoi An I flew up to Hanoi; I had planned to take the bus but it was 25 hours and I might not have been able to stay with Ras and Martin if I had done that. We ended up accidentally staying in an Israeli hotel, you can find these all over Asia, places where Israeli's somehow just know to go there. Loads of stuff inside was written in Hebrew, it's that bad. We only spent that evening in Hanoi, going to the night market and having a really nice kebab then having some Bia Hoi. The next morning we got a minibus to Halong City, on the East coast and found a hotel from where we booked a boat trip for the following day. We had the evening so I went to the market there which was rubbish, then we went for dinner and after went to a local club which was pretty weird. REALLY loud music, everyone sat round their tables and a hot girl and a gay guy dancing round poles... we didn't stay long!

Then was our boat trip through Halong Bay. We got on the boat in the afternoon and had lunch as we headed out to the islands, of which there's over 1000. We stopped at one of the first where we went inside a cave, it was massive with lots of different formations and lit up nicely. We sailed through the islands which was so beautiful, then stopped for some swimming. Me, Ras and Martin swam out to someones house on the water, where we saw them growing fish. There were different enclosures with the same fish in each, but getting bigger and bigger from one to the next. In the final enclosure the fish were MASSIVE, about a metre and a half long! The people living there were really smiley and happy to have us there, and were sat around smoking opium! We swam back to the boat and watched the sunset and then went to 'Cat Ba Island' where we were staying the night. We went out drinking, though everywhere closed at midnight so didn't stay out too late. The next morning we had a 5km trek up a mountain on the island. We saw some little villages, when we passed one a dog ran out and tried to bite my leg but only got a scratch from me. We made it to the top of the mountain for a great view of dense forest completely surrounding you. Once back in the town I met an English guy living on the island who invited me back to his house come hotel to play pool and drink beer. I spent the next few hours doing just that before we had to go back to the boat to leave. We stopped for a swim and I STUPIDLY jumped in with my phone in my pocket so now it's completely broken. And I jumped before the boat came to a complete stop and it continued about a further 500m which was the most tiring thing ever. We watched the sunset again, had dinner and stayed up drinking beers, sleeping the night on the boat. I woke up for sunrise the next day but it never came, too cloudy. So we sailed back into the harbour and discovered how bad a captain we had! He crashed our boat into 3 others, trying to get into spaces too small, reversing into them, etc etc!

We went back to Hanoi where we spent the day, went to an old prison there and took some photos. Not too much to do there though. Ras and Martin both left and the next day I went on a trip to Sapa, in the North-West. Got the train there which was... crap. My bed was a sheet of plastic. The fan only reached the top beds and I was on the bottom. There were 7 people in my 6 bed cabin. 2 people sat on my bed for ages whilst another put her feet in my face. One man came into the cabin, grabbed my bicep then left again. The bed was too short for me. The people played their ringtones over and over and constantly stared at me. Anyway, I made it to Sapa and had a shower and breakfast (I blagged 2 because I was hungry!) before leaving on our trek. 10km the first day, 5km the second. I was with an older lady about 50 who was really nice and a young Israeli girl who was a real environmentalist, vegetarian, animal rights supporter... you get the picture. By lunch time she couldn't take it anymore, seeing animals and children in poor conditions and having people trying to sell her things so she went back and neither of us were too sad to see her go! Had a really nice days trekking, stunning scenery, seeing the people cutting and sorting the rice, carrying crazily heavy bags up and down the mountains. We saw one guy who was carrying a tree weighing about 40kg, 4km from his village to the town so that he could sell it, buy food for his family and make it back that evening to feed them. We saw kids riding buffalos, starting fires, generally running around and being cute. We got to our homestay where two other people were staying and all went to bed fairly early. Had a good nights sleep and set out for the next days trekking. It had rained overnight and it some of the slopes and was really steep and really slippery. A couple of people fell, including our guide who nearly went all the way down the mountain but luckily managed to stop! We made it to the end of our trek and waited stupidly long for our minibus to turn up and take us back to the town. Walked around the town, then had one of the best dinners I've had in ages. The train back was a little better, I had a 2cm thick mattress and the people in my cabin were from the company I booked with so I was able to tell them when it was time to be quiet!

Found myself in Hanoi for the third time and spent a while uploading the photos onto my blog. Then in the evening it was time to leave Vietnam at last with the help of a 22 hour bus ride to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I payed extra money for a VIP bus with lots of space and air con, but ended up on the local bus with no space and no air con. Also loaded stupidly full with drugs, inlcuding all the way down the aisle half way to the ceiling so that you had to crawl to your seat. My seat was one from the back and the back seat was also loaded so I couldn't recline my seat. Then there were 7 or 8 people too many on the bus so the had to sit on the boxes in the aisle. Needless to say I was pissed off. Even more so when we arrived at the border 4 hours before it even opens, and then when it did open and I was one of the first in line they put my passport to the side and let all the Vietnamese people through before me. Then they told me I had to pay a fee which the Vietnamese don't... it was all one big joke to them I'm sure.

Anyway, I made it to Laos, have now been here for just over a week and am leaving tonight. Catching the overnight train with a friend to Bangkok, where I'm meeting 4 more friends :-D I'll do a Laos update with writing and pics ASAP, we don't want this getting too long!