puma making football in public

so we decided to do a flashmob in bombay for football... we wanted a coupla freestling footballers, dancers and a love equals football formation... and of course we expected the audience to join in... but our guys love to watch a show...they dont really want to participate ....watching is more fun than being part of it... !

Overall it turned out pretty well...we had about 1500 people stopping in their tracks and watching us make love (football) in public... for those of ya'll who haven't seen it.. here's the link to the frickin video... ole ole ole ole ole....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Its3Z9Z_jaU

Brand skeleton

Brand values and positioning are the most important foundation for the brand. They form the basic exoskeleton without which the brand will not be able to 'stand' the test of time...

I feel the brand can be fleshed out by giving it visual, audio, tactile, olfactory and taste dimensions.. (not necessarily all but I'm sure there are innovative means to capture all...)

for e.g. every new car that you buy has a new car smell... did you know that that smell is 'manufactured' specially because customers love the smell? Even the sound of the door shutting can be manufactured and it has been for some brand (can't recollect which one - but Martin Lindstrom's book - Brand Sense will tell you which one)

If airtel can have a hugely associative musical brand sense when as an industry it has nothing to do with music per se...I'm sure brands can manufacture offerings for all senses.

When umbrella branding won't work for a brand

Recently MTS billboards have sprung up aplenty all over Bombay.. I'm sure they're ubiquitous all over the country or at least in the ... ahem.. metros and Tier I cities...

But the more I see them all over the place the more I feel that the brand launch is pretty poor. MTS India is, I think, worth over 600 Crore ruppees. It is a 74-26 JV between Russia's Sistema group and the Indian Shyam Telelink Group. It apparently has over 2.5 lakh subscribers in India under the brand name Rainbow.

Moving on from the boring stats... what I fail to understand is that if they have a brand name 'Rainbow' why they haven't bothered promoting it in their extensive OOH campaigns.

Secondly even if they do not want to promote Rainbow (which I think is a mistake because Rainbow already has a 2.5 Lakh plus customer base) they definitely need to have a telecom brand and move away from leveraging on their coporate brand (MTS) and communication elements (egg shaped logo).

The logo which is an egg is suppossed to symbolise 'simplicity' and 'genius' which don't seem to be brand values in sync with the industry they are operating in i.e. Indian telecom!

Furthermore, none of their communication builds on the 'simplicty' and 'genuis' values (keyword being 'and').

Even tho' they are a CDMA provider, afterall they will have to compete with GSM operators like Vodafone and Airtel who have very effective, emotional and loyalty inducing communication... I really don't understand MTS's brand strategy. They have a good, although temporary offering (although I have my doubts about the efficiency of the promo strategy as well) which is 10,00,000 minutes free for life and the ad copy for that is.. 'Now I control time' which is okay but the image is just so cliche!!! (Some people may see the 'simplicity' here but I ask where is the 'genius' necessary to make it effective).

Which brings me back to the point...in today's turf with stalwarts Messers Airtel and Vodafone (Shah Rukh Khan and the ZooZoos) it will be difficult for MTS to make a mark and increase its brand equity in India, even tho' Millward Brown and Brandz count MTS among the Top 100 brands. And at the end of it all, it is the brand that matters today.

Brand sounds for a higher equity

I read a book called 'Brand sense' by Martin Lindstrom, which talks about how the most successful brands cover as many senses as possible in their touchpoints...thus exhibiting a direct co-relation between brand success & number of senses incorporated.

Now every brand will have some inherent senses that it can exploit through touchpoints..e.g. a fragrance brand will marinate consumers in their offering.

Talent lies in incorporating more senses than the only the obvious one (or two) and thus capture a consumer's imagination through multiple stimuli!

This is where jingles and musical intelligence comes into play big time. I personally think human beings are more susceptible to auditory input than to visual input. Every brand can create a musical touchpoint... something distinct... and build communication into this avenue. The trick is to get the tune right... sometimes the most annoying tunes get stuck in the mind but they've served the purpose.... awareness and recall... bingo's bbooiinnnggg is a classic example of an annoying sound that automatically and distinctively brings the brand into my mind.

As a brand I feel adidas is very foresighted... they realized the power of music and have gone ahead and created a special soundtrack with 'welcome to adidas' throw into the track for all their retail stores.... and the stores are only allowed to play this track... I'm sure such effects register in the consumers mind and will justify their investment in time because such tactics will sub-conscioulsy make the consumer choose adidas over another brand. Airtel is another brand that has effectively gained mind-share through the route of capturing the ears of consumers and they've done a great job.

Jingles can serve as an anchor for a brand... you start off with an innocuous tune and suddenly you see the ad, text and whatever else the brand wants to communicate in the mind's eye. However, unfortunately not all brands are exploiting this sense.

Brand managers should, at every step, see how many senses they can incorporate. In the Philippines, HUL organizes events and creates a whole 'cooking extravaganza' experience for their consumers - Hotels, cafes, chefs... very innovative... don't you think? I agree with Martin Lindstrom, a brand which incorporates as many senses as possible will occupy foremost position in the customers mind. Once that is done, you can be assured that the customer lifetime value will be skewed towards your brand even though the customer is an experimenter... we all like our comfort zones... we'll try something new but return to refractory position and once a brand occupies that refractory position, it needs to stay there.

A new twist to BUMming - Brand under management

To keep a brand alive and kicking is the brand manager's only mandate... sounds simple but it actually involves looking at the BUM (brand under management) as a stand-alone business because keeping it at the forefront of the consumers mind is no mean task.
Why? ... because a brand should stand for something and what it stands for should be repeatedly delivered to the customer... satisfy him... everytime and delight him as far as possible.
So basically the brand has to maintain relationships with the customers, his preferences which are in constant flux and also with its backbone - i.e. the guys who work it... the employees who manage the BUM
It is the brand managers task to figure out the integrated marketing and communication plan, and which functional, rational and hopefully self expressive attributes will be communicated.
Communication, I feel, is the key to kickstarting or boosting a business but it's so easy to get it wrong because even though the objective is decided, suppossedly, this objective which should be the centrum turns out to be the most fluid part of the campaign!
That's where the brand manager needs to ensure that he doesn't lose sight of whether the campaign is an Awareness, Interest creation, Desire generation, Call to action, Reminder campaign.
While preparing the brief it can be easy to lose sight of the main objective, try and do a bit of everything because we as human beings are greedy and end up spreading ourselves too thin.
Communication budgets are too material an amount to make this mistake. Usually research is conducted at the end of a campaign to determine how successful the campaign was... can you imagine the difficulty in getting quality and accurate feedback for a campaign with a confused objective? And then the brand manager will mostly have to resort to window dressing to save his bum (of the arse variety)!
At the end of it, even something like brand management comes down to basics:
1. Knowing exactly what the objective is
2. Sticking to the objective
3. Establishing and maintaing relationships - with not just consumers but business partners and employees as well, a because a successful brand will have each of these stakeholders as a brand ambassador.

The brand-trend continuum

A brand occupies top of mind position in a consumers mind only if it repeatedly delivers value (read promise) over time. Is a brand successful if it comes up foremost in the consumers mind when he thinks of the category of product it falls under or is it successful if it elicits a certain response or association in the consumers mind?

I guess these are two strategies brands can employ:

1. Try to become the category

2. Create a specific position in the consumers mind i.e. stand for something, mean something to the consumer

Choosing option 2 and succeeding is more difficult than making option 1 work because creating a specific position in the consumers mind and staying put there is a really difficult task.

Why?

Because consumer trends keep changing. Every change represents an opportunity for a brand to deliver on that trend and occupy numero uno position in the consumers mind.

So for a brand to set up base in the consumers mind, it needs to be endowed with crystal ball powers... well something like that...

However, it can be done... brands in the past have done it, if not globally at least in the countries of their birth... Nike, adidas, Harley, IBM

And doing it repeatedly builds up alot of brand equity and firmly places the brand at the right end of the trend-brand continuum.

Colour your brand with a story

Neck-ties have descended from cravats which apparently were introduced to the French by the Croatians during the thirty year war. If you notice, the most popular print on ties today is the diagonal stripe. Coming back to the origin, the tie's true origin can be traced to pieces of cloth worn by warriors around their necks with the sole purpose of wiping the blood off their swords after destroying an enemy. Wiping the gore off the sword left behind a diagonal stripe. This cloth was never washed and the number of 'stains' denoted the ferocity of the warrior.

Ties today are an essential power dressing item for men. But I haven't seen any apparel, accessory brands use brand stories to engage the customer. Me thinks the origin of the tie makes for a very powerful story that a brand can use to great effect.

I find that brand stories are an excellent engagment tool. I've personally found my response to a product change after reading a snippet on the packaging or have been given some trivia alongwith the product. Not only does my attitude to the product change, but I'm subsequently bound to tell my sphere of influence about the story. And I'm sure I'm not that much of an outlier to state that consumers are likely to react the way I do to a good brand story... of course the keyword being 'good'.

By nature we humans love stories... using brand stories automatically encourages us (consumers) to share 'em coz everybody runs out of a personal story sometime but always wants to have a one to share...

Differentiation in today's world of plenty

Today there is a product for every need, known and unknown alike. Not only are there specific products for the 'need' there also are products which do a complete overhaul and claim cater to additional needs while they're taking care of one...

This to me means that diffentiation on the basis of product attributes seems more difficult or rather maintaining a competitive advantage through a product attribute differentiation is getting increasingly difficult. In such times I feel that a more focused communication strategy can offer differentiation or maybe if the brand increases the number of touchpoints, incorporating more senses that can also be an avenue for the big D effect. For example, if a restaurant wants to increase clientele, I would recommend they get a 'XYZ on wheels' and take the restaurant to an always jaded customer - the young professional...always on the lookout to try something new and a large enough customer base to provide business for a while...Social media can be used to make the offering more engaging like a Korean fast food (roll) lady did... She used Twitter to tell her customers where she would be at what time and what her menu for the day'd be... I think its a fabulous concept and something that can garner enough attention through word of mouth...

why branding is important for an SME

At dinner last night, with a couple of my friends who run their own design firm, AND DESIGN, we were talking about how touchpoints are as important as the actual business so that a certain look is created or delivered to the client. They were telling me about a client for whom they designed a really good looking business card which he loved but he cut corners by compromising on the paper and print quality... end result... the effect of the card was lost...

That got me thinking... sure the way you do your business is extremely important but it is also equally important to look attractive to bring in more business, for which communication has to be attractive...

The thought I had was the minute a business looks capable of generating increasing revenue, it starts to look even more attractive....and it begins unlocking its own value...

Since brand valuation takes into account business that the 'brand' is capable of generating, the SME then automatically starts increasing its own brand equity.... now why is this important?

In case the SME wants to sell out and make a fat profit, 'Brand Value' could be that contributing factor to the high valuation.

Comes back to the fact that Brand building is important at every stage in the business's life...

Brand resilience

Are established brands too big to fail? If so, do Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch, GM still command the same brand equity they did prior to the financial fiasco the world is emerging from, hopefully.

I don't think you can ever get too big to be able able to damage your brand... but I do feel that times of trouble determine whether a brand is resilient or not...

According to the Global 500 Report which ranks brands based on their brand valuation, the Tata brand lost only 16% brand equity at the height of the economic crisis while loads of other brands lost between 40-60% equity... Brand Citi lost 59%, Dell 60%, Mercedez Benz 48%, AIG 42%, Allianz 34%, BNP Paribas 33% and Chase 40%!

Brand Tata lost equity due to uncertainty in the auto & steel sectors, the incessant (and still lingering) question marks over their various acquisitions while it gained a few brownie points coz of the Nano .... overall the brand has performed really well and I think its a good example of brand resilience.

So what contributes to brand resilience?

According to me its the faith consumers have in the brand.. the brand has to stand the test of time... which is why functioning with a focus on brand values and delivering consistently will help build equity to such a level that a crisis won't be able to shake the consumer's faith....

Source: http://www.livemint.com/articles/2009/04/20215603/Brand-Tata-shows-resilience-l.html

Brand Values

I was recently plagued by a question which I haven't been able to answer satisfactorily...While creating or revamping a brand how do you decide what the brand values should be...

The reason this thought entered my head was coz I've been trying to define what exactly a 'brand' is to me... and the best description I've come up with so far is that it is naught but a set of values that are demonstrated over and over again through all the aspects of business... product, communication, packaging, place, promotion, relationships etc

Once I had a fix on the definition I started thinking about whether brand values are established on the basis of what the brand is at that moment or what you'd like it to be... now if you choose the latter then it means that there are values absent at this point in time but will have to be inculcated... and this is where the dicotomy arises... is it possible to inculcate values or should you draw out positives that you have and not bother with trying to imbibe new values... the reason being that if tis a new set of values you may not be able to demonstrate them consistently thus damaging the brand...Or is it possible to build new relationships keeping the new brand values in mind without any risk to the brand?

My personal choice is to go with what you have and not inculcate new values and if you want new values dig deep to find the right set of values...

I feel that usually brand values are closely linked with the values of the founding figures e,g, Adolf Dassler and adidas - performance, ambition, drive to excel... and founding figures are usually quite iconic...so even if the brand gets a bit jaded over time, values can be obtained from these founding figures and conveyed through brand stories I guess...

I also wonder if the financial modeling whiz's can come up with a beta for brand risk?

Digital Brand synergy

While researching about brands I came across a write up on an Indian brand of apparel - Turtle, named after the famous Teenage Mutant Ninja Series... but the owners 'went a little deeper' into what they'd like the brand to communicate and came up with a brand story communicating testudine (like a turtle) aspects they wanted to incorporate...they've used the fact that turtles are very active and outlast every other being... thus communicating that they will always be in the middle of things... coming out with new product lines, designs and their brand will last for a really long while...

I personally haven't seen their range of products but I'm sure the touchpoints used will have tremendous brand synergy... I say this because when I logged onto their website http://www.turtlelimited.com/ I was very impressed with it... the website is very interesting and every aspect has a brand story- simplistically told...

every category of their website builds on the story to culminate into a whole picture which is completely in sync with their brand values and what they stand for...

Brand building

'Brand' is such an over-used word that sometimes it becomes a filler or impressor phrase. But there is a lot of depth to this term. I've been thinking of how to crystallize my thoughts on Brand Management to be able to pen them down for my own reference.

If somebody wants to build a brand (product or business) he or she needs to build their brand first. Now why is this important you may feel? If there is an existing brand that you want to manage.... you have to be able to demonstrate that you can manage it better... and for that you need to build your brand...If you're launching a new brand... you need a strong brand (your own of course) to be able to create alliances and prove your brand (product, business) is the right choice.

I'm going pen down what Vertebrand Management Consultancy has to say about brand building...

The best way to start would be to clearly define the industry the brand is in... once that is established, it is essential to understand

A. The industry to see how competitors are:

- functioning

- talking

- dramatizing

B. What your strenghts, weakness', stories and vision, mission, objective are are - figuring internal capabilities is extremely important because every company will have some peculiarities which can be highlighted and communicated into brand stories.

Figuring these two out lets you understand what the brand needs to have to belong and what it needs to cultivate to stand out by creating a distinc brand identity and personality - i.e. essentially be top-of-mind when a consumer thinks of buying a product in that category

C. Target Customers & their wants - As cliched as this is, inspite of brands claiming to be customer centric they don't always know what the customer wants or arn't able to deliver it... which means with solid customer relationships (which take time to build) a brand will know what to offer in keeping with trends and how to communicate it. Understanding customer segments and their buying behaviour will allow the brand to be able to constantly tweak its delivery, communication and hopefully over deliver leading to customer delight

All these facets of the business will eventually let you figure out what your brand's core values, differntiators, identity and personality are. This in turn allows for a more synergistic logo, positioning statement and marketing strategy.

Yo!Retail

The Nielson company recently released some data on how people network.

I've uploaded the stats for Facebook & Twitter users segregated age wise. Now if you look at the splits you notice that majority of the users are in the 25-49 age group, followed by the 50-64 category... The interesting aspect is that people in the 25-49 bracket are usually the target customers for most brands... even if they arn't being advertised to it is usually their wallet which is under attack!

Now given this age group's networking preference i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, MySpace, it is only logical that brands create an online Retail presence on these sites.

I've joined the adidas originals Facebook community and am pretty impressed with it... it isn't as active (at least in India) as I'd like it to be... but it has over 2 million fans and it does use the platform pretty well to connect with us... there's house party updates, collection showcasing, events updates, downloadable widgets that are all used pretty well to keep the fans coming back for more!

Facebook & Twitter make it so simple for brands to have an online presence (I don't see how Linkedin can be used and have no clue about MySpace) But when I look for fashion and apparel brands, I don't find too many of them on Facebook... in fact, too many is a euphemism! The option of creating a virtual property isn't exploited enough and this I find very shocking given the penetration of facebook users across the world!....

Facebook (at least) makes it so easy for a brand to build emotional equity by engaging users through various activites - it can update its fans (loyalist, advocator etc) about the latest collection, create ensembles, find stores, send out events invites and so much more!

I'd love to work with brands to create their online properties! It'd be sooo much fun coz the online space allows for so much interaction...I'm sure brickbats too are in equal measure... but I think even that could be converted into a fun game.... for example.. if you don't like a brand, you can throw stones, water balloons etc at its store.... it is the brand fan's job to prevent somebody from throwing stones or the fan can help clean off the paint...

that's the only thing that came to my mind.... but I'm sure there's an interesting game lying there somewhere... and what with the number of people diligently taking up Yoville!, Fishville! etc... I'm sure there will be takers for my YoRetail! game, if ever I come up with it....In fact... YoRetail! can work along the lines of all the other vil(l)es... buy land, develop a mall, upgrade it, convince brands to rent space, manage it et al! I think it could work...

Cliche Campaigns for Brand Strategies

On my way home last evening I suddenly thought of cliches and how they're comforting because:

1. The person spouting them knows what to say (it can be a mindless statement)

2. The recepient has a choice of responses and hence won't be dumbstruck

I guess its comforting by virtue of the fact that its known and familiar as oppossed to the panic that sets in with not knowing (usually)

Now while thinking along this pathetic train of thought, another more interesting thought was added to my brain's computing power...I'd been watching ads online coz I love doing that... I realized one thing that even though an ad is extremely funny and creative (read unusual) it still wont be as sticky in the long run as a well executed but been there done that concept infused with emotion.... for example a havell's ad may not be as sticky as a cadbury's ad (the old one) and this has nothing to do with the nature of the product... (of course I could be wrong)

But what this made me conclude is that branding is about building relationships with customers, promising them something and delivering it repeatedly... with cliched but emotional concepts such an effect can be achieved and I feel that maybe for a more successful brand campaign you should use a more emotional approach than an off-beat unusual approach... because the consumer already has emotions related to your brand and with a campaign adding to those emotions and given the power of repetition, the % of mind-share may be higher... Just a thought.. unfounded as of now!

Baseball Philippines

Hey All,

I'm gonna deviate a bit from bhavisha generated content to publishing something that I'm very inspired by. An alumnus from AIM worked on a thesis report to establish an MLB (Major League Baseball)-esque format in the Philippines called Baseball Philippines.

I actually think very few people in the world are fortunate to find something they are passionate about and Leslie Suntay the proponent in the Baseball Philippines MRR is one such person... he has the guts to follow through with taking his passion and turning it into something that has the potential to bind the whole country... SPORT! it takes a lot of courage to establish a circuit like the one he's set up... especially in an age where people are looking to secure themselves only through monetary means... by no means am I saying that Baseball Philippines is not capable of generating huge returns... quite the contrary... sports is a big market.. in India it's almost a 1900 crore market!

So here's how Leslie ventured into Baseball Philippines:

"With a bit of divine luck and perseverance, matched with a desire to pursue what excites you will more often result into something special; my story is only one of the many in Baseball Philippines that helped pursue a common dream for baseball that led to the creation of the only existing premier baseball league in the capital today. In 2003, my road began by helping organize an open amateur league for “weekend warriors” called the Titans baseball club, where from four teams it grew to eight all due to the clamor for more tournaments. The next challenge was to cater to a good number of players to want a Class “A” league. This prompted me to seek the help of sports gurus with a common passion that led to Baseball Philippines Pilot Series last May 2007. The work has never stopped then and what was once a simple dream has brought the game to our live radio coverage and select games shown in our very own television sets. I’m glad to be a part of something that makes me and many others happy, as the saying from the classic movie goes…”if you build it…they will come.’"

Are we losing out coz of a servile attitude?

I've been plagued by this question for a while now... I've always found that when it comes to confrontation, no matter how motivated we are amongst ourselves, when it comes to taking an issue up we always falter!!! Why?

Then I came across an article which said that Indians by nature, like to please others... example: If the boss asks you when you can deliver something, without knowing for sure you'd say next week when realistically speaking it'll take over 3 weeks...and that's coz they want to please their superiors...

During another conversation with a friend, discussing sports, I've always wondered why we haven't made it big... and what emerged was shocking,... .coz we arn't wired to win... is that a direct implication of being servile?

While talking to another friend about the racist attacks against Indians, a friend said that such attacks were not frequent or intense against Chinese nationals coz they're scared that if one Chinese guy is attacked his whole community will stand up for him and take action... there's no such 'worry' when it comes to us Indians...

We apparently like to mind our own business at our own expense.

Makes me that more certain that I will veer away from such behaviour... I could be completely off on my diagnosis but I can't understand why we can't work together and stand up for each other... sometimes taking a stand is important!

Manchester United on a platter...

Last term at AIM I opted for Brand Equity Management as one of my electives... as one of our course requirements we had to study Real Madrid and recommend branding strategies for them... which of course our class would judge and not the 'real' team... anyway.. so as part of our recommendations we suggested that Real Madrid go into a chain of restaurants... more like sports bars... coz fans usually go watch games at bars and owning a chain of restaurants is pretty cool... at least in my books... owning a restaurant has a high lifestyle, image, glamour quotient...

So when I came across a press release that Manchester United (no surprises there... they are fantastic at marketing) has given Manchester United Food & Beverage (MUFB) Asia, a Singapore holding company, exclusive rights to own, operate and develop a chain of Man U restaurants & bars all over the APAC region... I was super thrilled...

Total Sports Asia (TSA) envisioned the entire branding strategy... India's going to have its very first Man U Cafe in Mumbai at Nirmal Lifestyle in Mulund thanks to Billionaire Sports...

Right now I'm a month away from completing my MBA but I'm dying to get back home (Mumbai of course) and check the place out... so expect 'experiential' blogs about the place...

Day 8 - Travelogues, Sapa, Vietnam

By far my most favourite place on our backpacking trip... we reached Lao Cai at 4:30 AM and caught a taxi for 30,000 dong each (about $3)... i think it took us about an hour to get to the picturesque mountain village of Sapa. We knew it'd be cold there but the rain greeted us as soon as we got there...! so at 6:30 am, in this breath taking place we alighted and looked for accomodation... all of us were charged up with the fresh mountain air and started hunting for places... we got something for $12 ($3 each) and since the hotel guys readily agreed, we knew that we'd definitely get a better deal.. and sure enough we managed a deal for 5 frickin dollars TOTAL that's $1.25 per head!!!!!!! in a gorgeous hotel called sapa twilight with hot water, a kitchen we could use for free (of course the ingredients had to be ours), heater pads to keep the beds nice and warm and free internet in an empty hotel!!!!!!

as soon as we got in we ordered hot chocolate... there's something about sitting in the mountains with the clouds coming in through the window to greet you and a mug of hot chocolate in your hands! ooooooooo mama.. orgasmic!

since it was raining, we spent the afternoon indoors and took off in the evening to go and see sapa's waterfall.. we rented bikes and hopped on... even though I was disappointed with their waterfall whcih was more a gushing mountain stream than a waterfall, the entire journey was so beautiful that I have absolutely no complaints...

finished early and had an early dinner... now we were really excited that we were saving money on accomodation and thought that we could treat ourselves to a slightly expensive meal (i.e. stuff ourselves with food)... unfortunatley... sapa's restaurants dint match the economy of the hotel rooms! every restaurant was really expensive!

that night when we sat to budget... we realized that we'd have to stay in sapa for 3 days more.. simply coz staying in sapa would help us with finances coz the hotel rates were so cheap!

wow.. we actually stayed in sapa for 4 days coz our room rent was peanuts! i still get stunned by our move.. but it was awesome

Day 7 - Travelogues - Cat Ba Island

This was the second day of our 2 day package tour of Halong Bay...it's a total waste to stay overnight on Cat Ba Island if you take a 2 day package... all we did on Cat Ba was sleep! Its a shame actually coz the place looked really pretty...
breakfast was provided by the tour agency... entertainment wasn't part of the itenarary but we got it free... there was this random dude... half indian, half jamaican or something.. drunk at 8 AM... he kept dancing in the middle of the road, teaching kids how to run, randomly walking up to people and shaking their hands.. all sorts of weird things... he drank throughout the 6 hour journey... which was a good thing.. coz if he wasn't drinking he'd be bugging us... the weirdo was so drunk he bit the guide!!!
anyway.. enough about him.. day 2 was pretty much a waste.. but the boat ride through halong bay is worth it all...
we got back to hanoi and immediately rushed to the station to catch a train to lao cai and go onto sapa... this time round we had a luxurious 4 seater coupe and it was so pretty.. we loaded up on bread, cheese and beer for the journey and took off...
we got into the compartment and couldn't get enough of it.. cute little train with a cute lil compartment...