We had two options – normal targets, or “moving” targets in the form of chickens in a big cage. Hit the chicken – you get to take it home for dinner. Being vegetarians, we decided for the first option. Jo went first, with the pistol. Then me with the rifle. Then me with the pistol again. I’m no sharp shooter. I’m not even a blunt shooter. And Jo has already proved that she’s a better shot than me.

Meanwhile, our Korean guides were eyeing the chickens hungrily. Sure enough, as he promised, one of them grazed a chicken leg with his first shot. And we had an extra guest on the bus back to the hotel on its way to the cooking pot…

The first leg, overnight to the Chinese border town – Dandong, passed uneventfully as we had a few beers, chatted to the other people on the tour, the guides Gareth and Richie, and the former North Korean ambassador to Australia.

In the morning, we waited at Dandong for 2 hours for border formalities and as they coupled our 2 carriages to the North Korean train. After a long wait (which Jo managed to sleep through), the train trundled off across the bridge and onto North Korean soil. We pulled into a turquoise-painted station, which looked like it was from a bygone era, with the face of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung smiling benevolently down at us.

The border guards got on to check our paperwork, and to inspect our belongings. You can take mobile phones into the country, however the border guard has to wrap up the phone carefully so you can’t use it and document everything. Not that you can actually use the phone even if you wanted to. But what they really don’t like is GPS. One of our travelling companions had an iPad – which the guards amused themselves with for a while until they saw a map on it. It took 20 minutes to convince them that there was no GPS on it, and finally they agreed to seal it up like the mobile phones. We later heard about someone who had a $2000 camera confiscated because of GPS capabilities.

With all the paperwork done, we popped out into the station waiting room – which had a very convenient micro-brewery attached. 9am, less than 1 hour in North Korea, and we were drinking a brew which tasted distinctly of apples, while taking sneaky peeks out over the town square (although officially we weren’t allowed to look!).

Back on the train, we trundled slowly towards the capital city – Pyongyang. It would take nearly 10 hours to travel the 225 km/140 miles. Yes, at 14 miles per hour, North Korean trains are not exactly high-speed. We got our first glance of the lush green countryside, some small, concrete-built towns and wandered along the train. In the restaurant car, we had our first Kim Chi in country and second and third Korean beers.

It was dark when we pulled into the station in Pyongyang. The digital clock on the platform read “19:45″. Strangely, it did feel like we’d arrived back in time in 1945…

Now, to go to North Korea, you have to go in and out via China. (Technically, Russia is possible, but much it’s a much less frequent route.) This means that you have to get a double entry Chinese visa. Getting one of those in Vietnam? Very difficult at the moment…

A bit of background. For a number of years (well, most of the last century), Vietnam and China have disputed some small islands in the middle of the South China Sea – The Spratly Islands and The Paracels. It all got a bit heated recently, and there were protests in Hanoi and live-firing drills around the disputed islands. The Hanoi government has been winding up tensions with various accusing stories about the Chinese, including how they are buying up all the local produce and therefore to blame for rising prices on basic staples. There’s even a regular patriotic TV programme about the islands, called “Núi sông bờ cõi” (Our Land, Our Sea). However, the Vietnamese authorities have realised that people are getting a bit too wound up, and since then the demonstrations have been “discouraged” (“According to police, Duc has confirmed that he was not beaten by the police during his detainment that day…”), and Vietnam has emphasized that they and China are actually BFF and not frenemies…

Before this all started, it was easy to get a double entry visa to China in Vietnam. Now, only SINGLE entry visas are available. Which was a bit of a problem. Young Pioneer Tours came to the rescue. We could get a re-entry visa for China in North Korea! Apparently they nearly always give visas back into China. All we needed was two passport photos each, because passport photos are difficult to come by in Pyongyang.

We excitedly got hold our North Korean visas about 3 hours before we got on the train. We decided to remind Gareth, the Young Pioneers Tours guide, about the Chinese visas. “No problem,” he said, “as long as you have your passport photos…” We didn’t… We’d left them at home…

One frantic search for a photo shop in Beijing later, we rushed back just in time to board the train. Only thing left was to cross our fingers and hope that we would have the visa to be able to leave North Korea when the time came…

So when we saw “big white ants” come back this year, while our landlord was away, we called his sister urgently for help. She didn’t seem quite so perturbed, and the next day she returned with… a cardboard box with some wood and a brick in it, which she proceeded to put under the tap to make it damp before placing it on the windowsill. We had to leave it there for 2 weeks and not open the window.

I wasn’t so convinced. I wanted to see heavy-duty chemical sprays and workmen wearing hazmat suits. Call me new-fashioned, but a soggy cardboard box with some scrap building material in it just seemed like witchcraft to me… The landlord’s sister explained that there was poison in the box for the termites to take back and kill off the nest.

We’re waiting to see what happens and hoping that in the meantime the (wooden) windows and all the (wooden) furniture doesn’t suddenly collapse into piles of dust.

It was meant to be a relaxing long weekend in Sapa. But a certain tour agency in Hanoi, that will from now on be known to us as the “Boomerang Cafe”, nearly ruined it. The (Australian) owner’s aggressive and unapologetic attitude and his apparent belief that the customer is always wrong, meant that we nearly didn’t go…

Fortunately, we did get on the train, and arrived the next morning near the Chinese border at the very North of Vietnam, ready for a couple of days of walking in the misty, rice-terraced hills. Well, except that we sulked on the first day, still feeling wound up and totally the opposite of relaxed, and just stayed at the hotel admiring the view and wandered around the town, rather than go walking with the guide.

Fortunately, on the second day, we allowed ourselves to go on a long walk down into the valley. Then back up the hill after one of our companions decided the planned route was too dangerous without ropes and mountaineering gear (and she was probably right), and back down again to the bottom of the valley to the Flower H’mong and White Dau tribal villages. Still, the views were stunning.

After the long walk (OK, we got a car back up the hill), it was back to the noisy and bumpy overnight train to Hanoi and a few hours at home before going to work. Hmmm, relaxing weekend?

Blind motocyclist (from dantri.vn)

Apparently, because he is blind, he felt bad that his wife was the main breadwinner, and insisted that he should learn to drive a motorbike and take her to shopping, collect firework, etc. Here’s a video of him driving. If you look closely, you’ll see that his wife actually nudges him so that he turns in the right places. Not sure what the job of the other passenger is…

Although the veggie pies weren’t available, they did have pickled eggs – which was quite exciting.

The chips were good – although the curry sauce was cold. The view over West Lake was great. And I love the T-shirts that the servers were wearing, which shouted: “EVERYDAY IS FRYDAY”.

The leaning tower of Pizza Hut

We’ve visited their outlets in Germany, Poland, Russia, China, India, Singapore, Serbia, Romania, Thaliand, the USA and the UK…

And of course Pizza Hut is in Vietnam. We were looking forward to the opening of restaurant number 3 in Hanoi. However, it wasn’t third time lucky for Pizza Hut here, and we won’t be visiting it very soon. On 30 March, 1 day before its official opening, the 5-storey converted building started leaning and then suddenly collapsed. Fortunately everyone had been evacuated an hour before. You can see a (rather scary) video of it falling down here. It seems that installing the trademark large windows had taken out a few too many supporting walls.