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Ah.... Back to Hanoi and back to the rooms we had prebooked at the famous Hanoi Backpackers. We were all tired (us and our three little friends from Chiang Mai: Jess, Sandy and Kelsey).
We were all looking forward to a chilled out evening and early night, but when we arrived back at the hostel there was a slight problem, they had messed up the rooms and the only room left was a triple, that they kindly offered to put 2 more beds in so we could all share!! yipee a slumber party! Alex is a lucky boy, sharing a room with 4 other girls :) In the end it turned out ok bacause we got the room a little cheaper! We all went out for dinner then came back and watched a movie on our flat screen tv!!
The next day, we all went to the literature temple, which was quite interesting, we learnt about confucius and saw some random stone turtle statues holding scripts, with the names of people who had achieved a lot academically - the stone and the turtle symbolising living on forever.
Then we went back to the hostel for the Sunday afternoon FREE keg of beer and BBQ! which was a LOT of fun, we got speaking to a few people and decided to head out on the town, Alex was extremely pleased to have some lads to watch the Liverpool game with, and even more pleased that they beat untited 2-0!
While Al was watching the footie, me and the girls headed to a few bars in Hanoi, only to get lost and be late back to the Hair of the dog, (the bar where we were suppose to be meeting alex in) we stayed here for a few, had a brief encounter with police due to the 'illegal' lock in - before heading back to our room.
The next day me, Al and one of our new friends, (Jess) were yearning for some more cultural delights, so we headed to Hoa Lo prison, where they kept prisoners of war, the Vietnamese political prisoners, from the earlier resistance against the French and later, the American prisoners from the Vietnam war. It was quite interesting but depressing to see how the vietnamese prisoners were kept, (in horrendous conditions), in comparison to the American prisoners, (who kind of treated it like a holiday camp). We also found out that U.S senator John McCain served time there in the Vietnam war!!
After this museum, we thought we'd head to the Vietnam History Museum, if I'm completely honest I was a little museum'd out, but I took one for the team! The exhibits started off to be all about the history of man, which we didnt really think was that much to do with Hanoi specifically, so mooved swiftly on, then as we walked through it was quite interesting seeing artifacts that were used in day to day life, such as vases and bits of pottery and buddahs, but kind of got a bit same same! So we decided to check out the old quater of the city, where there were some really random streets that all sell the same thing, shoe street, sold only shoes, bag street sold only bags and paper street....you guessed it!
We were exhausted after walking round the city all day so decided to head back to the hostel to see if the others were back... they wernt, so Alex and Jess forced me to play scrabble! Not impressed, but secretly enjoyed it!
When the other girls got back from their fun day of shopping, drinking and chillaxing it was time to get our sleeper train to Hue, and as a gift they bought us all 'Good morning Vietnam' T-shirts, which was quite funny for our train journey!
Bring on the cosy "soft" sleeper train!
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