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Leaving china early in the morning we arrived in Hanoi for early afternoon, plenty of time we thought to get our bearings and find a hostel before dark, what we hadn't prepared for was the bus station being on the outskirts of the city, miles from any hostels or tourists! This quickly became a problem we realistically looked at our situation - we were 2 westerners, loaded with all our gear, with no idea where we were, where we were going and no local currency, to be honest we didn't even know the exchange rate which was a bit of a shock when I put my card in an ATM and was offered 3 million dong! After wandering aimlessly for a while drawing unwanted attention to our selves we thought if best to just get to a hostel ASAP, luckily I remembered the lonely planet guide stashed in the depths of my pack so pulled that out, jumped in a taxi and pointed to the address of one of the hostels listed in the book! I'd never been to Hanoi before but even I could tell that we were driving in circles, though the driver pretended to have no idea what we were talking about when we quizzed him about it. It had been a very long day, I was hot and tired, the meter was about to hit 100,000 and when we passed that bloody yellow building, with the gates out front, next to the school, for the third time we wasn't best pleased, turns out he did understand a bit of English, even the swear words, and chuckled to himself when I exclaimed that we were defiantly driving in circles, and he just turned round and said 'yes we are'.....
The hostel was nice anyway and after wandering about the chaotic city for a while and getting our first taste of Vietnamese food ( which was really good!) we headed back there with the intention of having a couple of beers on the rooftop terrace. This was a bit of a mistake seeing as it closed at 9.30! In fact every bar any every club in the city must close by 12, by law. Crime is a massive issue and I suppose this is just one way of minimizing it further, I must say, I never felt particularly safe, day or night and that wasn't helped along by the posters put up around the hostels and touristy places telling you to travel in groups, be aware of pickpockets and biker gangs that operate constantly at night and will rob you blind, don't use taxis and bike taxis late at night be back before 12 and avoid going off the main street! Welcome to Hanoi! I think it's just the hectic-ness of the place, I've never seen anything like it or so many people in the same place going different directions on motorbikes, it's not very pretty, just a maze of dirty roads, shops and restaurants and a big lake in the middle! No, I'm being unfair, it is a fascinating city and the history there is unbelievable it just didn't really appeal to me and tourist-wise there wasn't a great deal to do (the war museum was really good though and well worth a visit!)
So anyway we decided to head out that first night we arrived, seeing as it was Friday and we has a new Canadian friend who was in leave from fighting in Afghanistan. Before long my opinion of the city had changed, we were in our third club, it was 2 in the morning and we had managed to find a place having an illegal lock-in with the shutters down, previously we had been celebrating a Vietnamese guys birthday with him and his massive group of mates and been fed expensive whisky from the bottle, practically taken over the club and was in the middle of a crowd circle teaching everyone in the club dance moves (with the birthday boy on me and az's shoulders for a bit of it) then realized we were drawing a bit to much attention to ourselves when some bloody scary Vietnamese blokes in suits parted the crowd and made a bee-line for us, removed all the women nearby and just stood there. Time to leave! So there we were, shutters down in a club in central Hanoi partying illegally with random Vietnamese people having a great time when the army kick through the door, flick their night sticks out, storm in with flashlights and clear the place out! Which wasn't ideal as it meant that we were now in Hanoi by ourselves at 2.30am not knowing where we were and unable to use taxis for fear of being mugged. Memory's foggy but we made it home safe and sound, and even managed to get food and another cheeky pint in an underground reggae bar too :)
We were in Hanoi for 2 days and was ready to leave after that, we'd done pretty much everything worth doing so gig the map out and decided to head north for a few days, into the mountains and tribes territory!
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