After our Halong Bay cruise, we returned back again to the Astoria Hotel and Travel and headed straight out to get our Halloween nails done! Tiger had designs on every finger and toe! We then headed out shopping - I ended up buying another suitcase to take home! And we particularly focused on Halloween clothes as I had a cunning plan.... We awoke bright an early on our final day in Vietnam, Halloween, Friday 31st October. We had a photoshoot booked so first of all we headed t

As I mentioned in my earlier post, aside from the Ha Giang Loop motorbike adventure our whole Vietnam trip was planned via Google and Chatgpt brainstorming! Which was how we ended up on a Halong Bay cruise. This was a 2 day, 1 night cruise and in my 48 years I had never been on a cruise. So this was quite special. I had browsed boats on the website Halong Bay Tours and eventually selected the Calista cruise. I'd mainly chosen it as it was big, had a little soft play in it and

Arriving back in Hanoi late on Saturday 25th October, we had one night in Hanoi at the Astoria Hanoi Hotel & Travel to simply sleep, get our washing done and repack the bags! It is worth mentioning that it is so incredibly easy and cheap to get your laundry done. There was a washing shop almost next to our hotel and the washing (paid on a card, via ApplePay) was just a few pounds and came back dried and folded. I should also probably say here that aside from the Ha Giang Loop

We spent two nights and one whole day in Hanoi, literally decompressing from our inbound flight. We stayed at Astoria Hanoi Hotel and Travel (£77 for 2 nights) which I'd booked on Booking.com but having stayed the first night, then canceled my future bookings and dealt directly with the hotel who gave me the room for 1,500,000 VND per night (£42). The room we had was what they call the Deluxe Double with Balcony - but it does seem worth double checking the price as it is now

We were so fortunate in October 2025 to have a two-week October Half Term which aligned with both my school, and Tiger's Primary School. So, far in advance I started to search for flights around the dates and eventually settled on Vietnam. On paper, the journey looked horrifically long but you certainly could not argue with the price - £857 for both of us return with Shenzhen Airlines! The comparison was about £1400 direct with Vietnam Airlines but I reasoned that after a 14-