Ooooops!

So it would appear that I'm not as tech savvy as we all thought:having written quite a long post earlier, I've only gone and deleted the ruddy thing. Good work!
I can't remember exactly what I wrote but I can certainly give the gist:
1. Yesterday Fin and I did a very cool cooking course. We learnt how to make four very delicious things which I will probably reproduce in a shambolic and embarrassingly inaccurate fashion upon my return. The course was led by a indescribably cute vietnamese chef and a translator/guide, who, for some reason, found Fin and I pretty amusing. It was definitely a case of laughing at and not with. But it was a great day nonetheless.
2. Today, as it wasn't apocalyptic rain, we decided to hire mopeds. Clearly nothing could go wrong. Except that it did. First, within 2 minutes of leaving the rental place, we managed to get split up and I somehow got lost and ended up doing a few laps of a very small loop. After a shamefully long time, I found my way back to the hotel where Fin was waiting, looking entirely unsurprised that I'd taken so long to get back.
We then whizzed off to the beach. It wasn't exactly tropical but nice to be outside the city all the same. As we were almost the only people on the beach, we were a prime target for little ladies selling all manner of useless stuff: toothpick holders, keyrings, Mentos, tiger balm-you name, they probably had something vaguely similar but theirs was likely to be better and 'very very good price' because apparently,  12pm on a windy beach in winter is happy hour! The two women certainly had the gift of the gab: I caved with one and bought some tiger balm (why, why, why? It's now just stinking everything out!) and the other one gave Fin some very excellent romance advice: he should have at least 3, preferably 5, girlfriends. I think he appreciated the wise words.
The next exploration involved another beach. Not the nicest beach ever and the guy looking after the free scooter parking place (well I thought it was free) decided that, actually, it wasn't free. When I refused to pay, we had a sort of argument-as much as is possible when neither of us had a clue about the other's language-and I ended up giving him significantly less than he wanted. I'm totally convinced he cursed me (lots of angry eyes, muttering and hand gestures) when I drove off, but apparently I'm being dramatic.  Moi? Dramatic? I don't think so.
So that is a condensed version of what I wrote earlier. It was quite an epic one so I'm annoyed at my own technical incompetence but c'est la VIE-etnam (remembered that great joke,though).

I eat too much? Thanks for that, tiny Vietnamese woman

Here we are in Hoi An and I must say, it is very beautiful indeed. Beautiful and full to the brim of British people. And rain. A lot of rain. We pretty much paddled home-it was almost like being on the beach in Scotland: water at your feet and also falling in copious amounts onto your head. It goes without saying that this is exactly what I dreamed my trip to Vietnam would be like.
We had another classic day of waiting around for transport yesterday: after a nice French breakfast with what I can only describe as an exceptional fruit salad, we hopped in a taxi that took us to quite a shifty looking travel agency. After our last encounter with a travel agency here, I was naturally somewhat sceptical about where we would end up. But we were bundled into a mini bus with two very French men and an old Vietnamese man. This, we thought, was our bus to Hoi An. But no, turns out it was yet another link in the travel chain. This little party bus went literally 1 minute round the corner and dropped us off at a café. There was a gaggle of unwashed Westerners outside, lots wearing baggy hippie trousers, so we knew we were in the right place. Seriously, the baggy trousers here are all over the shop! They seem to be the ultimate traveller accessory, along with some kind of bead/leather cuff that tries to say 'I am a man/woman of the world. Look at all these ethnic things I have!'. Actually they just scream 'I AM NOT FROM HERE' and gives them away immediately. Well, that and the fact that they are giants in comparison to all people in Vietnam. After waiting for an extra hour, we piled onto a crazy double decker sleeper bus with wifi (!!!) which I thought was the height of luxury until I got on and realised my seat had an odour not entirely dissimilar to that of urine. So that was a nice 4 hour journey.
We got to Hoi An at about 7 and were picked up by a taxi from the hotel which made us feel very important-the guy even had a sign. A special moment for us all, I think you'll agree. After dumping our stuff, we went on the hunt for food and found some incredible spring rolls and noodles. I can now confirm that it's possible to inhale spring rolls when you haven't eaten for 8 hours and have been trapped on a wee bus. We had a walk around the town which was all shiny and pretty and romantic, so very perfect for Fin and his very geeky cousin (me, in case you were wondering). We ended the day with a few games of pool and table football. All of which I lost.
Today was almost a total write off, thanks to the rain. We braved town for all of about 2 hours, which was more than enough time for a little Vietnamese lady to spot me and tell me that I have nice dimples and that I probably eat too much. We spent the afternoon looking at the rain and pondering the great mysteries of life, such as 'why is it raining so?' and 'rain, why must you torture me with your presence?'. We had a cracking dinner, though-pork ribs with satay sauce and sticky rice-and finished with a few beers and some good old fashioned card games.
We're doing a cooking course tomorrow so fingers crossed it won't be bucketing it down: the course includes a relaxing boat cruise. Watch this space!

...and he put the cat in the bag and tied up the top

Xin chao from Hué, ye olde imperial captial of Vietnam. We arrived a full day later than expected, thanks to the shifty shuffler travel agency we booked the bus tickets through. Our 'last day' in Hanoi was spent hanging around, eating and drinking a lot, basically just waiting for the bus. We were actually interviewed by some Vietnamese students who wanted to practice their English on us. Fin and I were pretty sure that they were about 14 but, no no, they were like 19 or 20. They got very giggly when Fin said he was 20-a nice little ego massage for him. I, on the other hand, again felt like a very gigantic clumsy oaf, especially when one of the girls sat right next to me to 'interview' me. It was less an interview, more just her telling me she likes to cook for her family and nodding politely every time I said something, which she clearly didn't understand at all!
We managed to get away from what could have been a verrrrry long conversation with the excuse that we were getting the bus soon. Technically true, but in reality, it actually didn't happen. We went to the street where the agency was to be greeted by the oh-so-comforting sight of the employees riding off into the night on their mopeds. I went into full panic mode, but was told to chill out and that everything would be fine. Everything was not fine! We waited for a good hour and no-one came: the only positive I could derive from the situation was that it felt a little bit like a 'Home Alone' situation, except a lot less fun. And there were no life sized cardboard Michael Jordans. Boooo. In the end, I booked us into a hotel and vowed to seek revenge on the agency the next day. They would rue the day they ever cheated me out of 50 big ones!
Dinner was a very interesting affair: it's quite possible that I once again consumed a part of a pig that is not necessarily on my 'must-eat' list. This time, intestines, which were deep fried so they resembled chicken nuggets, served with chilli dipping sauce and chips fried in coconut oil. Mmmm, coconutty chips. Sounds great, eh? (Just in case you weren't sure, that was thinly veiled sarcasm for you-the chips were beyond odd). After that culinary delight, I completely crashed: having a little nervous breakdown is certainly an effective way to tire yourself out.
The next day we were woken at 6am by a lovely sound of nature, namely a cockerel that was so loud I felt like it had snuck into our room in the night and was sitting on my head, waiting to alert me to the fact that the day, the wonderful day, had begun, so get up now please. And so it was time to face the proverbial music: I was off to the agency. Well, after a good breakfast, of course. Priorities. Worryingly, while we were having breakfast, we could see into the agency and the three guys in there had a little cat, which was promptly dumped into a bag, sealed off from the world and shoved in the corner of the office. That naturally did wonders for my nerves. So off we went to the cat murderers. And look, we survived! And we got our money back. However, there was no movement from the cat in the bag, so it wasn't a win for everyone.
Another day was spent waiting for a different mode of transport-this time, the train. It was a beautiful day in Hanoi and a fine way to bid farewell to this city which we had got to know very, very well indeed. Oh, and we had some bloody nice dim sum:they should call it dim YUM! Hahahaha-see what I did there? More of that comedy gold later. Anyway, fiiiiianlly at 7pm the train rolled out of Hanoi station on its way South. Fin and I had beds (beds is a very generous term) in a 6 person room and boy, it was cosy. The cherry on top of that cake? A snorer! Actually, the little dusting of icing sugar on the cherry appeared in the shape of a little chubby lad boarding the train at 5am (he wasn't alone, by the way-he had parents in tow) and preceding to watch some kind of very loud video on his dad's smart phone. Wow, kids are my favourite things ever. Truly a wonderful experience. We feasted on a picnic of Ritz crackers, Oreos and peanut M&Ms (no, I'm not giving away any of my culinary secrets-only a handful of talented people can come up with a menu so diverse, radical and delectable and I am one of them. Deal with it) and settled down for a 13 hour train trip to Hue.
Upon arrival, we walked down what I'm sure is the longest ever road to a little hotel and went upstairs to have a breakfast of kings: Ritz crackers, Oreos and peanut M&Ms. Having digested the gastronomical masterpiece, we toddled off to the imperial city: a very impressive site of old temples and pagodas from, errrrrm, the days of yore.
That was pretty much it from Hue-it's nice but nothing to write home about. Then again, it's basically one giant town-sized museum, so I'm sure a lot of people would tell you differently. Off to Hoi An tomorrow to eat my body weight in noodles for the next few days. I say that like I haven't been doing that since I arrived, which we all know is total nonsense.
As always, thanks for reading!

Ho Chi Minh and giant fake fruit-a match made in heaven

Greetings to you lovely people who are pushing through the pain and sticking with me here, and welcome to my last night in Hanoi! It's been a very relaxed couple of days, which we have definitely enjoyed. First and foremost, I would like to tell the world (all, hmmm, 3 of you, maybe, who are reading this) that couchsurfing is a pure joy. We are here in a very cool flat in Hanoi, pretending that we also live here and lording it around the centre of town with noses in the air, cursing all the ruddy tourists who swarm the streets. We simply don't mention that we are secretly part of that terrible group. Seriously though, we have lucked out with the place we're staying in and the hosts-two great Dutch people from, ta taaaaaa, The Netherlands! So yes, goooo couchsurfing!
Otherwise, here is what else has happened in the last couple of days:
-we went to the cinema. "Pray tell, what did you watch?' I hear you cry. Well friends, I will tell you...'Protector 2'. A Thai film. Martial arts based. In Thai. All in all, like Christmas had come early for me. The plot was riveting to say the least: a man's elephant was stolen and he went on a bit of rampage trying to get it back from the bad guys. There was a 30 minute long bike chase scene with some inexplicable elements (when I say some, I mean all), then a guy from the Wu Tang Clan turned up in a trilby and at the end he was blown up by the bombs in the elephant's tusks. And that was what I dedicated two hours of my life to.
After that seminal life moment, we sort of hung around in the hostel until we had to set off to the couchsurfers' house. The walk took about a million years through rush hour traffic with rucksacks. Another highlight. But any negativity soon disappeared when we arrived and were greeted with garlic bread and BEHOLD, tea!!!!! Sadly the sweat from the walk did not disappear as quickly as the negativity, but I was too busy crying with joy into my cup of tea to care. We just spent the evening chatting to the surfers and it was very excellent indeed.
Today, twas chilllllll. Fin and I took ourselves off to the Ho Chi Minh museum. Amazing how such a huge building can house such an uninformative museum. I now know what Uncle Ho looks like from every angle, but what the heck it was all about was not made abundantly clear. I looked at a cup he used, and saw a hat he once wore, but ask me what his main ideals were and I'd be speechless for the first time ever in life. There was also a room decorated like Picasso's guernica and, naturally, a room with a giant table covered in giant fruit. We then decided that the museum was the weirdest museum ever. Fact.
We took a stroll (read:hike) into the centre and had a strange little food tour. We ate the following: peanuts, a sweetcorn fritter, a fried rice cake with maaaaybe egg in the middle AND a delicious surprise in the form of a little piece of unidentified meat with some hair on it, then some Chinese braised pork served with 'fried rice with dried onions and fat'. We assumed that last one was just a bad translation but, no no, that is a 100% accurate description of what it was. Luckily, dinner brought the day back from the brink of food disaster: little pancakes filled with shrimps, beansprouts and herbs followed by roll-them-yourself fresh rice paper rolls with BBQ pork, salad and herbs. I hear your sighs of relief.
Tomorrow we leave for Hue and I believe there is some nice rainy weather awaiting us. Hurah!

BIG NEWS: I drank a coffee

You can call the Braunschweiger Zeitung and the Thornbury Gazette and tell them that you have the scoop of the year: I, Megan Skinner, drank a coffee and I liked it. Granted it was heavily laden with condensed milk, but hey, it was coffee. I'll prepare myself for the paprazzi onslaught when I get home.
So the last day on Cat Ba was fairly uneventful-just woken at the crack of dawn by a cement mixer. Hoenstly, I felt like it was right next to my bed. So that was nice. We just hung around for a few hours until our bus left back to Hanoi. On the little speed boat between Cat Ba and Ha Long, a Vietnamese man made it very clear to me that he found my grey hair rather hilarious. Who knew that taking the mick transcends the language barrier? Try and get to a specific place and you don't know where you'll end up, but making fun of people in another language is very very easy to communicate.
The bus journey was quite a long one, but there was no unceremonial chucking out at the side of the road this time, thank the Lawd. Back in Hanoi, we got off the bus to be mobbed by the taxi mafia of Hanoi and promtply teamed up with some Germans (surprise surprise) to get a taxi into town. Ahhhhh Bavarians, no matter how long I live in Germany, there will never come a day when I understand more than 50% of what you say. I think they were nice, but really, they could have been hurling insults the whole way and I wouldn't have known any different. We managed to get into a hostel and went out to feed our rumbling tums: a plate of fried deliciousness was not enough to satisfy us, so we treated that as an appetizer and went for an immense egg and pork sandwich. Yes Beth, one of those sarnies! Following a few beers, we were ready to crash.
Yesterday was a cool day- super relaxed, which was good after allllll the strenuous activity. Ha! We decided that culture was the order of the morning, and trundled off to the museum of Vietnamese history. There is lots, it turns out. Vietnam is a very historical country! Those who have ever been on holiday with me know that museums are not my favourite things, but I behaved well and didn't break anything, so you can see it as a huge development in my path to mature and responsible adult. The museum was followed by the title-worthy coffee break, and then lunch. Bun cha, for the record, is bloody nice. Look it up and work out how to cook it for me when I come home, pleeeease. We then walked around for a lot of hours. Well, I say walked around- it was more just getting lost. We did chance upon a great cafe, though, which had seriously the best peanuts I've ever eaten. Stupid as it sounds, they were a massive highlight of the day. We even went back there later with some people from the hostel and their lives were also changed by the peanuts.
The day ended with a little beer tour of Hanoi with, of course, a German in tow. Very funny indeed! We're off to stay with a couchsurfer this evening so wish us luck!
Hope everyone is well

Am I in France?

Bonjour, tout le monde! Bienvenue à la belle France. Obviously I'm not actually in France but I might as well be considering the ridiculous number of Frenchies here. On our first day in Cat Ba, I thought that the Germans were the overwhelming majority but turns out their old frenemies the French have le upper main (the upper hand, for those not as gifted in French as my good self). They are everywhere, shrugging and looking surly as only the French know how. Fin and I are becoming quite the experts in guessing nationalities and we have got the French well and truly down now.
We had a really great day yesterday, although it was another early start, which Fin loved with all his heart. At about half 8 we went out on an old wooden boat into the bay for a day of water-based fun-sadly it was quite cloudy and a bit nippy on deck, but we hardened sailors toughed it out for a couple of hours. We sailed through some amazing scenery-huge rocky cliffs and a totally incomprehensible maze of little islands and fishing villages. It was truly amazing. I now have about 5000 photos of some big grey rocks, which you can all look forward to seeing when I work out how to upload photos on here. The accompanying dialogue will be something like this "here is a big rock. This another big rock we saw and THIS is a particularly rocky rock of the rock variety". Yes, you should be very excited.
After a couple of hours we went off kayaking into some so-called secluded caves, which were less secluded and more like a meeting place for Foreign Visitors to Cat Ba. Despite the kayak party in the lakes, it was actually beautiful-we even saw some wild monkeys, just chilling out on some rocks, having a little grooming session. Fin, being the 20 year old lad that he is, challenged some of our fellow tour mates to a kayak race. As I was in a kayak with Fin, I was more than thrilled at the prospect, especially since we had no life jackets. Great!
Back on the boat, it was, mercifully, time to eat what I can only describe as a culinary miracle. It was a full on Vietnamese spread of fresh fish, spring rolls, squid and shrimp patties for 12 people, all cooked in a tiny kitchen at the back of the boat. I'm pretty sure I ate about 80% of the spring rolls, but I distracted people from this by talking to a German about Everyone's favourite holiday topic-tax! Oh, it was a great conversation-so joyful and full of light and hilarious anecdotes about the delights of the German tax system. You can imagine the laughs we must have had.
The rest of the day trip included some swimming and snorkelling, which lasted all of 15 minutes because it was actually rather murky in the water and pretty chilly, and more chugging around on the boat. We did a few laps of one part of the bay because somehow we lost a kayak and we had to go look for it. Our guide even had a safari explorer hat on for the occasion. Unfortunately it didn't help his kayak-seeking senses and he gave it up as a lost cause. We eventually got back about half 5 and went for a well deserved lie down before going out for some lovely beer with some of the people off the boat.
All in all, a rather tip top day!

For the record, I'm not a fan of pig testicle

I know everybody says that Vietnamese food is absolutely amazing and up until last night, I would have been right there driving that bandwagon. That was before I was served an otherwise delicious meal which involved, as is probably quite obvious, a pig's gonad. Yes friends, I looked at the suspicious round thing on my plate and thought 'hmmm, maybe that is a little testicle there on my plate', but I ate it anyway and decided that yes, I was probably right. For the sake of those interested, it tasted like a spongy meat flavoured egg. As delicious as it sounds.
My foray into the world of eating animal goolies came after a bit of an adventure on our way to Ha Long Bay. We got the bus (evidently the wrong bus) ok and four and a half hours after hopping on, we were promptly turfed out onto the side of a dark highway. "Luckily" there were some conveniently placed moped riders waiting on the off chance a bus load of people containing 7 clueless tourists would drive by and bustle the tourists off. THANK HEAVENS FOR THAT, EH? At this point, I think me and the other people from the bus (Czechs-also clueless) were a little bit panicky and worried that we were going to be taken into the night and held at gunpoint and robbed of all our worldly possessions and never see the light of day again. Fin, on the other hand, was cool as a cucumber and hopped on. Turns out they didn't want to kill us, just take us to a hotel. So we didn't get as far as we had planned that night, but on the plus side, I can now say I've survived a near death experience (yes, it was near death, I'm not exaggerating at all), eaten a pig's ball and nearly got chased by a Vietnamese police man for going to a private dance performance (thanks to dear cousin of mine).
Today was much nicer, although an early start meant no breakfast for my rumbling stomach. We haggled for a taxi to the ferry terminal and got on what can only be described as a pile of rust that formerly may have been recognisable as a ferry. Now it is rust, held together by a little bit of non rusty metal. Obviously, I felt safe as houses. Or not. It was a cool trip, though, right through the bay past all these giant imposing cliffs. It was like out of a film. Except I wasn't a secret agent or an elf or something cool like that. Just an English person sitting on a floating pile of rust. When we arrived on the other side, we jumped into a little local bus and went the rocky road to Cat Ba town.
Upon arrival, both blinded by hunger, we went to almost the first place we saw and trusted one of the MILLION Germans that are here that it's a decent hotel. It is. The room has an amazing view and we have a bed each, which is mega luxury. They also rented us a moped, which is terrifying/awesome fun. We zipped around the island a bit, meeting more Germans and hanging out on some beaches, and came back for a well deserved rest. The woman in the hotel told me she saw me driving and I don't drive fast enough: a country where they encourage you to drive faster? I think this is my mum's dream country

Oh look, a man draining the blood from a beheaded turtle!

Yes, that is one thing we saw today on our big giant walk around Hanoi. It was quite gross but weirdly compelling. The main question was : what the Dickens are they going to do with all the blood? It turns out that turtles are quite the bloody animals. Another great fact to add to the list of useless information stored in my brain.
Believe it or not, turtle death was not the highlight of the first full day here. We had a fairly late start and had a decent breakfast in the place we're staying-Fin was overjoyed that it was an unlimited buffet-and then we set off to find the Temple of Literature. We found it ok, but so had seemingly ALL the high school students in Hanoi. There was some kind of massive graduation ceremony so, instead of marvelling at the beauty and wonder of the place (it was very beautiful and wonderful), we mainly just watched Vietnamese teenagers throw their hats in the air.  A warning to all female Western travellers: Vietnamese girls are tiny and beautiful, so expect to feel like a big, clumsy, giant whose facial features were randomly selected from a pile of  'unused' ones and then thrown onto your face from about 10 metres by a blind man with no arms.
Afterwards, we had a big long walk around the French quarter, which is really interesting and filled with beaucoup de Françaises. For lunch, we found a little street stall and I munched on some tasty ribs, and Fin went for tofu. Oh ribs, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways... well, 3, as that was how many I had. Needless to say, they were gone in about 10seconds, down into my belly. Yehhhhh. The meandering (also known as getting totally lost) continued after lunch and ended with a coffee up above the streets. Oh yeah, and Fin had a flipping delicious sandwich. He said that he's going to have one for every meal from here on in. I don't believe him.

Congratulations for getting to the end of this post-you should be proud of your perseverance!

Oi oi Hanoi!

Oh, hi Hanoi!

Looks like we made it here just about in one piece. The flight was an absolutely almighty feat of endurance- 12.5 big fat hours from London to Kuala Lumpur, so needless to say, I spent some quality time with the in-flight entertainment system. The Heat, by the way, is very funny. Sandra Bullock is a total classic. Also, the food was pretty good for an airplane: salmon and tilapia, and prawn curry and rice for breakfast. Yehhhh.
Then it was a 3 hour flight (delayed, obviously) from KL to Hanoi. This ALSO included breakfast of Malaysian pancakes and chicken curry, which is obviously exactly what I wanted at 10am.

After a bit of a wait at Hanoi to sort out the ol' Visa, I finally got through to see Fin brandishing a homemade sign with my name on it, so that was an unexpected bonus. Hopped in a taxi for a DEATH RIDE to the centre, where we were promptly taken to the wrong hostel. But thennn we found our hotel and turns out to be super swanky and we have a laptop and free Wi-fi, so hence this post.

Ok, I think it's shower time because we are both stinking.

The madness (almost) begins

Well, I guess this is my blog...ta da! I'm not one of the great literary minds of our time, so don't expect too much from this, but at least it'll keep interested parties up to date on my adventures.

This post is really just a test to see if I can actually work the bloggy thing correctly, so there is nothing too interesting to say right now. I have mainly been despairing at the amount of money I've spent in Boots pharmacy the past two days (it's a lot, in case you're interested...probably not). And planning my post-trip wardrobe, which consists almost exclusively of kaftans and moomoos to accommodate my Asian-food-filled belllyyyyyy.

I hope that there will be more interesting things to write in the near future. More for your sakes, really- most people know I can talk at great length about very boring topics.

Yess, my dinner is ready. Bye!