Today involved a lot of travelling - started with a 6.30am taxi to Dalat airport, a 2 hour flight to the capital Hanoi, another taxi to transfer us to Hanoi Centre, then a 2hr bus to the border, a 30 minute ferry to Cat Ba island and finally a 30 mins transfer to our hotel. Phew!!! The flight from Dalat (regional airport) to Hanoi (capital city) was quite reminiscent of our trip to China back in 2006 - a bunch of people who'd probably never been on an airplane before, said people all sitting in the wrong place on the plane, said people jumping up the minute the plane landed only to be severely told off by the air-hostesses for doing so. Most people on board were wearing masks (we're still resisting for now!) but most of them seemed to be coughing and spluttering a bit so perhaps it was for everyone else's benefit. As we landed in Hanoi we could barely see the runway from an altitude of just 10m - the smog was the worst I've ever seen. The pollution rating was just "very unhealthy" (the 2nd worst category) but thankfully not "hazardous" (the worst!). It did feel a bit claustrophobic I have to admit but we were only in town a couple of hours before escaping to the coast. In fairness to Helen our various connections all worked smoothly and it wasn't too tiring a day.

Cat Ba is a geographically stunning island on the coast South East of Hanoi. It's made up of some very steep standalone limestone hills going straight into the sea. The main drag in Cat Ba town is a little tacky - lots of neon signs, hostels and cheap bars/restaurants but there is a nice atmosphere. We were woken at 6.30am by the morning broadcast (on street speakers) of "good news" from Vietnam (in Vietnamese of course, but someone later explained to us what all the noise was about). I asked the guide was this just propaganda or real news - he looked confused I'd even ask such a question - "it's good news to wake us up with". Enough said. After a little confusion about what time we wanted breakfast (7:15 was understood as 7:50!) we made our way to a boat for a trip of the hundreds of islands around Cat Ba. I have to say it was a stunning and somewhat surreal landscape - I'll let the photos do the talking on this one. We did some swimming, kayaking and then cruised around in the sun. Except on our 2 big travel days we've had sunshine all the way so far which is incredibly lucky.

And this morning we leave Cat Ba after a fun and relaxing couple of days and head back to Hanoi. It'll be fun to meet up with friends Catherine and Ant but I can't say I'm looking forward to the traffic and smog of the city.

In other news, Joseph has been continuously attracting a lot of attention and smiles because of his blonde hair. He's been photographed from distance, asked to pose for photographs with people and generally gets a lot of smiles and pointing from males and females of all ages. In Cat Ba it seems to have stepped up to a new level - he gets given sweets from people, was given an extra discount for our boat trip and some people have started, gently, touching his hair. We asked a waitress why she touched his and not Charlie's - she replied that Charlie was "too cool".

In other other news, this morning we had noodles for breakfast. Like real locals.