'The biggest cup of coffee in Hanoi'

Hanoi is a funny little town - especially if it's your first experience of South East Asia (as it was for me).

First of all, with a population of 4 million it's not a 'little town' at all but this was my first thought after having spent so much time in China (where there are over 160 cities with a population over 1 million). The little narrow streets and the fact that none of the buildings are more than 3-4 floors high adds to this notion.

Secondly, there were an amazing amount of scooters around! It was like being in Finglas only without the tracksuits. This is not that unusual for those who have travelled in SE Asia already, but I found the constant beeping of horns and crazy driving to be overwhelming. In Ireland, someone beeps the horn if they are annoyed (and they want the annoy-er to know about it). In Hanoi, I think it's how you say hello. (It's also how you say 'I want to overtake you' and 'Fair enough... off you go'.) The drivers were crazy and we had already seen one road fatality after only 3 bus journeys!

While we're on the subject of dead bodies... after missing out on seeing Chairman Mao in Beijing, we had hoped to get a peek at the embalmed body of Ho Chi Min but unfortunately he (it?) was on loan to Russia for its annual maintanance.

The Lonely Planet mentioned a place called the Kangaroo Cafe which served 'the biggest cup of coffee in Hanoi'. This sounded like just the trick to take our mind off the mayham so we dropped in. This was the first step in a chain of events which would result in us staying for 7 weeks in Vietnam.

Kangaroo Cafe (as well as serving coffee) also offered a variety of tours. We decided to sign up for their 3 day boat tour of Halong Bay - a beautiful bay with huge limestone rocks jutting out of the sea. The tour was fantastic and we ended up sharing the boat almost entirely with a bunch of Aussies (I think I'm going to like living in Australia!). One night of the tour, we stopped off at an Island and dropped into a Kiwi bar for a few drinks. This one in particular had a flyer for 'Rainbow Divers', a dive centre in Nha Trang (our next destination) and a map of the same town on the back.

After Halong Bay, we took a 26 hour train journey south to Nha Trang (listed as the best scuba diving spot in Vietnam). We wanted to do a dive or two so thought it was worth stopping off before moving on to Ho Chi Min City (aka Saigon).

With the Rainbow Divers flyer and map in hand, we made our way to their shop and were very impressed with what we saw. They had 2 PADI Course Directors as staff (PADI's highest rating) and a pile of other experienced instructors, and could offer any and all courses. We decided to make use of the opportunity (and the very low cost) and signed up to do the PADI Rescue Diver course.

We had the full attention of an excellent senior instructor (and two divemasters) all to ourselves for the whole 5 days and thoroughly enjoyed the course. There were jokes about coming back and doing the divemaster course (6 weeks+) but with Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia & Singapore still to come there just wasn't time (maybe next year, we thought). So we bought our train ticket on to Saigon and were sorry to have to leave the place.

While packing up our stuff, we discussed it a bit more about if and when we would come back and came to the conclusion that there's no time like the present. And so it came that we completely changed our itinirary for the remainder of the trip.

All those other countries would have to wait for another trip, and all because of the biggest cup of coffee in Hanoi.