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Click on image for a larger view.With the arrival of Tet, the Chinese New Year wildly popular here in Vietnam, came a cold snap that had people wearing coats, ear muffs, and us freezing most of the time. Hanoi at first was crowded and noisy but just in the last few days the sidewalks are no longer cluttered with people and their transport. Turns out this is very close to the US Thanksgiving Day (weekend) where everyone feels they must visit family. In order to clear out the city of Hanoi they had to take all the available transportation, leaving us with the Sleeper bus. In the pictue to the left you can see how large this sleep mobile is, with four seats across and many rows back. It tooks us 15 hours to get to Danang, where we are now.
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The Billabong Pub on Australia Day (click on image for larger view)After we recovered from that insanity we headed out for dinner, which turned out to be an Australian Pub called the Billabong on Australia Day (akin to the US July 4th weekend). Here on the right are a roomful of Ozzies, their flag high and pround. The couple holding the large flag are Sarah and Jon, also traveling around the world and you can see where they've been here on their travel blog.
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The Mango Hotel in DanangOur hotel here has a view of the ocean and is much quieter than Hanoi. People are starting to discover Danang so there are many more backpacking types of travellers here than we've been used to.