Viet Nam and Laos

Getting ready for our next trip with the "travel family". This time it's Viet Nam and Laos and it's coming SOON! I'm just trying to remember how this site works so I'm practicing a bit this morning. I can never remember how I send invites to my Blogspot to people find me so let's see what we can do.

We fly to Shanghai, China directly from Chicago on United (14.5 hours) and then have to spend 7 hours or so in the airport. There is a hotel right between the 2 major terminals in Shanghai and we plan to grab a room and "refresh" for a bit. Then it's a short 2 hour flight to Ha Noi on Shanghai Air. We arrive at 1:00a.m. and there will be transport for us to our hotel. We will be staying at this place in Ha Noi: http://www.desyloia.com/. Sleep for a while and get up around 10a.m. and head out. There is a real nice lake only a mile or so from the hotel and we plan to head over there and eventually have some Pho (Vietnamese soup with noodles). Connie and I will attempt to not get too lost in our wandering. Around 7:30 that evening another couple (Luis and Chio from Ecuador) will be arriving at the hotel. We'll look for them and see how they're feeling after their flight from Boston. I assume they'll be pretty tired. If they're up for it we'll explore the night markets for a while and then hit the sack.

The next day we have some time to explore before we meet up with the "Final Four" (Rich and Gayle Rediker and "Richie" and Bobi Steingart) back at the DeSyloia. These guys have been in Viet Nam for a few days before us and have been on a boat trip on Halong Bay. Rich has planned a nice dinner at the hotel around 5:00 before we are transported to the train station. We take the train in a nice sleeper car and magically will arrive in Sa Pa (north and west of Ha Noi) the following morning. We'll spend 3 days up in northern Viet Nam with bicycling trips and shopping at a local market before we take the train back to Ha Noi. Transport to the airport for a 1 hour flight to Luang Prabang, Laos. We spend another week in Laos and I'll try to detail that a bit later.

I'll publish this now and see if it looks any good. More later........