We now reach the final part of our Vietnamese adventure. We'd experienced the hectic city life of Saigon, seen the devastating effects of the American War, spent time on a remote island filled with history and good dive sites, seen SE Asia's answer to Newquay and visited the quaint French colonial town of Hoi An. With great memories from all of these places we decided it was time we headed to the country's capital city; Hanoi.

It was here that some of the first Vietnamese people we met took it upon themselves to try and ruin our impression of a great country. We'd experienced setbacks before, but nothing too serious. After all, there's only so many curse words one can use to describe Vietnam Airlines. I digress, let's get back to the story. We'd already been told a few days before we flew out of Birmingham that our original hotel was being renovated and we were being moved to another, comparable hotel. We had arranged with the original hotel for a car to come and pick us up and were concerned that this arrangement wouldn't stand with the replacement. However, the car was there and our minds were at ease. The driver also said he'd be able to drop Jamie off at her hotel too. So, as we headed from the airport to the city we were feeling relaxed, even if the driver kept trying to get us to watch Vietnamese music videos.

We were expecting to drop Jamie off before us, but we got dropped off first and were suddenly made aware that the driver hadn't understood us at all about dropping Jamie off too. After speaking to another person at the hotel it was arranged that they would drop her off for a small fee of £2. Off went Jamie and we were shown to our room. It was one of the nicest rooms we'd stayed in so far and we couldn't believe it was only costing us $12 a night. We dumped our bags, headed back down and asked where we could get some food as we were both ravenous. It was at this part of the tale that the evening turned sour. As we headed past the front desk, we were casually asked if we wanted to book any trips or tours whilst we were in Hanoi. We played it dumb and told them that we didn't realise we could book tours with them and so had pre-booked a 2 day cruise of Halong Bay. This response had worked in the past and we believed it had worked again. We had read that a lot of hotels can mistreat you if you don't book tours with them. However, as we walked out the man behind the desk suddenly asked us if we could come back in as there was something he needed to tell us about our room. He then proceeded to inform us that they didn't actually have any $12 rooms available and the room we were in would cost us $25 if we wanted to stay there. We told him that we weren't prepared to pay $25, being as that was more than twice the price that was agreed. We also proceeded to tell him, in as well mannered a way as we could in our exhausted and hungry state, that why in the name of whatever deity they worship did they agree to take our booking if they didn't have space for us. We also pointed out that if they didn't have a $12 room for us we would have no qualms in finding another hotel to stay in. We were then given two options; stay in the room for one night, but pay $12 and then change to a $12 room in the morning or go to the hotel across the road that did have a $12 room available. We were leaving early the next morning for our cruise and so knew it wouldn't be possible to change rooms in the morning so we agreed to look at the other hotel. We were quickly shown a horrible room, with one wall covered entirely in mould and which had a stench capable of destroying the hardiest of noses. We left the hotel as quickly as we entered and returned to the negotiations. As we became more tired and definitely more hungry, we'd decided to spend one night there for $12, AS WAS AGREED, and then let them move our bags to a smaller room the next day whilst we were out on the cruise. However, we were greeted by a different man who said that staying in the room for $12 was never an option! We pointed out that he was completely wrong and we had been offered that, but he said we had misheard the previous man. Before I ripped off his arm, beat him to death with it and then barbecued it to satisfy my hunger we told him we would find somewhere else to stay and that the most useful thing they could do, besides dying a slow and painful death, would be to call us a taxi to take us to our new accommodation. After a quick internet search, we found and booked another hotel, scribbled down the address and left.

We have also since found out that when they dropped Jamie off at her hotel, they asked for double the amount of money for what could only have been a 5 minute journey. Targeting a lone, female traveller, scumbags.

We will have our revenge. We have the full name of the man who took our booking. Tripadvisor, Booking.com and the Ministry of Tourism will all hear about New Century Hotel. However, most importantly, after checking into our new hotel, we found a restaurant just around the corner. A BBQ pizza and spaghetti bolognese worked wonders in bringing our evening to a nice conclusion.