We flew into Hanoi and spent the first few nights at the Guoman Hotel booked through asia-hotels.com for $69 for a double with breakfast (ended up being about $84 with taxes). It's a very nice, standard international type hotel in a pretty good location. If I had it to do again, I'd probably go for something much cheaper with more personality. Hanoi is such a cool city to wander around!! Talk about sensory overload! We took an overnight trip to Halong Bay with Handspan Tours (booked through the Tamarind Cafe in the old quarter) for $35 each. Too cool!! The day was hazy but we cruised so close to many islands and the scenery was gorgeous! The dinner on board was one of the best of the trip! They asked if we had any special requests so we said no meat, and they fixed lots of wonderful stuff just for us. Mmmmmm....! That was really a great experience. We spent another night in Hanoi, then left on the Victoria Express overnight train to Sapa. We had a really nice cabin with 2 beds and a/c. The trip was much shorter than I'd thought (barely 8 hours) and we arrived in Lao Cai before 6am and took the hotel's bus to Sapa. The Victoria Hotel is nice and has an excellent breakfast buffet! We had 2 days there and hired a guide and went hiking in the hills. That was awesome. Back to Hanoi for another night then we flew to Danang and stayed in Hoi An for 4 nights at the Vinh Hung 2 Hotel, booked directly with the hotel for $35 per night. Hoi An is a great little town to poot around in. There are many good restaurants (and very cheap!), loads of good shopping opportunities (and very aggressive sales people!) and lots of really cool stuff to see. The town itself is a UNESCO site and really is like walking through a museum. We took a daytrip to My Son, the site of an ancient Cham temple complex, and also to Marble Mountain and China Beach. We spent our last night in Bangkok at the Sofitel Central Plaza Hotel out by the airport. It's really really really nice. I booked it through hoteltravel.com for $83 inclusive. I thought it was right by the Skytrain station Mo Chit but it wasn't and we had to take a taxi. If you have any questions or want some info, I'm happy to try and help! Post here or send me an e-mail at [email protected]. Later!

Thanks so much for your report peep! Its less than 3 weeks till I'll be going to Vietnam &amp; I'm so excited! (I'll be staying at the Guoman in Hanoi too!) If you don't mind me asking what sort of stuff did you get shopping?<BR>Cheers...

Oh my, we shopped a LOT! Hanoi is overflowing with shops with all kinds of stuff for sale, as is Hoi An. We bought (silk?) Chinese lanterns for a few bucks each, (fake?) silk scarves, an engraved gong, t-shirts, woven wicker coasters, lots of cool pillowcases, had some clothes made in Hoi An and miscellaneous other doo dads. We didn't buy, but saw lots of colorful lacquered bamboo dishes, great artwork, small water puppets, wood and stone stuff, snake wine (eeeek!) and all sorts of other stuff. The old quarter in Hanoi is a great place to buy lots of non-souvenir stuff, too, but bargain hard and look around. We needed a travel clock and got a really cool one for about $15 after the store next door said $35. And lots of postcards! I got several package sets at a bookstore for 7000 dong each and one guy on the street (there are lots of guys selling postcards!) asked 190,000! Commerce is alive and well in Vietnam! At least where we went. Have fun Lucy!

Good to see you back, peep!<BR><BR>Isn't the snake wine scarey? Did you taste it? I didn't and wouldn't. Not sure though, what we were served sometimes. ;o)<BR><BR>Have fun, Lucy!

Hey Ursula! Uh...no...we didn't try the snake wine. Didn't try dog or snake either but I'm a vegetarian.

Hello Peep!<BR> Shopping and eating,my favorite travel pasttimes And what about having clothes made for you? I am sure those little pups in VN would wish more people were vegetarian!<BR> Welcome back home!

Sounds like you had great trip.<BR><BR>We're leaving next Wed for Vietnam and have a few questions:<BR><BR>Did you encounter any anti-American sentiments because of the impending war with Iraq?<BR><BR>Are there ATM's in Hoi An? I'm assuming there's a number of them in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Please correct me if I'm wrong.<BR><BR>Finally, what's the weather like now?<BR><BR>Thanks for your help.<BR><BR>

Howdy Roz! We didn't encounter any anti-American sentiment and the few looks we got when we said we're American probably had nothing to do with Iraq. It seemed to me that they've put the war with the US behind them and while they haven't forgotten, they aren't stewing about it. Like one Vietnamese guy told me, &quot;We won the war.&quot; The few people I talked to about Iraq said they thought it was a problem between governments, not people. <BR><BR>There were ATMs in Hanoi and we saw one, that we didn't try to use, in Hoi An. At any rate, they aren't on every corner in Hoi An so take cash or US$ travelers checks.<BR><BR>We didn't go to Saigon (nobody there called it HCMC) but it was warm in Hanoi, maybe highs around 80-85 and a little warmer in Hoi An.<BR><BR>Woo hoo! Have fun!! It's such a cool place to visit!!

Welcome home, Peep! (I wanna go shooopppinggg in Vietnam again......)<BR><BR>The snake wine, dear friends, is incredibly nasty. I had just a sip for politeness sake, but I'm guessing turpentine would have tasted better. (But no Fido--thank goodness for all the lovely veg!)<BR><BR>And there are ATM's all over Saigon as well as Hanoi, but Hoi An is a different story~~take plenty of cash for getting those clothes made.<BR><BR>Happy trails!

Hey, Peep. How did you get from the airport at Denang to Hoi An? And out of curiosity when and how did you buy your air tickets to Denang and how much did it cost?

I traveled to Vietnam in January. Our hotel arranged a car to meet us at the airport in Danang for $10. <BR><BR>We waited until we got to Hanoi to buy our flights. We flew from Hanoi to Danang on Pacific Air in first class for $63. From Danang we flew to Saigon on Vietnam Airlines for $91 coach class. We saved between $40 and $60 per ticket by waiting to buy them in vietnam. Our hotel arranged the flight to Danang and we purchased our flight to Saigon through Buffalo Tours office in Hanoi.

Thanks, Anna, I take it you mean the $10 was from Denang airport to Hoi An?

Just came back from 3 weeks in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. never felt uncomfortable, just a little in Phnom Phen Cambodia, never inVietnam. Best advice to me was: take cash, especially dollar bills, everthing is $1. We took 100 one daollar bills and could have used more. Have fun. helen

Thank you Peep &amp; Ursula for your well wishes...only 17 days to go (but who's counting? )<BR>Helen, would you mind expanding on your comment about Phnom Penh being the only place you felt a bit uncomfortable? After Vietnam I'm spending a few days in Cambodia &amp; the very last day in Phnom Penh where I thought I'd do some shopping at the markets on my own - should that be ok for a solo female?<BR>Thanks!<BR>

Patrick, we arranged for our hotel in Hoi An to pick us up at the Danang airport for $12. We prebooked all of our flights but it looked like it would've been cheaper and easy to do it there. I don't remember the cost because it was lumped together with all of our flights.

Patrick,<BR>Yes, it was $10 from Danang Airport to our hotel in Hoi An. We stayed at the Cua Dai Hotel.