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We arrived at Hanoi airport after a very quick 50 minute flight from Vientiane, Laos. Even though we had only flown 50 minutes, the weather had changed dramatically... very cold and cloudy as we stepped off the plane. Avoiding all the taxi and mini-bus touts we headed straight for the shuttle bus which we knew took us straight to the city centre and was much cheaper. Driving towards Hanoi centre was dismal, not the nicest of sights if we're honest. We got dropped off the shuttle bus somewhere in the city centre... once Peter had got his bearing and found out where we were, we started walking towards the Old Quarter, where the majority of budget guesthouses are located. We had only been on the streets for a few minutes, but we had become fully aware of how busy and crazy the streets in Hanoi were. Crossing the road was a challenge in itself, the trick apparently is to walk as slowly as possible, edging your way across!! They won't stop for you but they will dodge you. Finally after navigating our way through the madness of the Old Quarter we found a decent room for 12$ a night. We hadn't even put our bags down and they were trying to sell us tours etc....
That evening we just had a walk around, a bite to eat, then we stopped at one of the street bars... basically a bar at the side of the road with little plastic chairs on the pavement. We enjoyed our evening there, watching the world of vietnamese madness go by. We tried to fit in with the locals by buying two of them cone shaped hats which they wear to protect themselves from the sun we think. (check out the photos so you know which hats we mean!) When we decided to call it a night at the street bar, we went to pay... the stupid woman tried to charge us for an extra beer! We were quite adamant we were right and that she was trying to con us out of more money. Turned out to be quite funny in the end, the lady got quite angry at us shouting random stuff at us... "stupid bloody foreigners, whats another 25,000 to you?".... Errrr, its another beer we can buy somewhere else thankyou very much!! We ended up having to pay the amount she wanted, else the situation could of got out of hand.
The next day we decided to do a walking tour of Hanoi city centre, taking in a few of the sights. We had a funny interaction with a couple of vietnamese women. They were street sellers, who walk round the streets with their goods in two baskets, balanced over one shoulder by a plank of wood. (again look at photos to understand what we mean) They tried to put the baskets onto Lucy's shoulder, saying 'photo, photo'. We knew though that if we took a photo they would want money of us and purchase some of their bananas or pineapples. They said 'no, no we won't charge'... yeah right!! We ended up taking a couple of pictures of each other with these baskets of fruits over our shoulders, with their cone hats on. When we'd finished there was no chance of escaping with out purchasing some fruit of them... the lady tried to sell us about 10 bananas. Peter replied we'll just have 2 bananas. After negotiating a price of 2 bananas for 10,000 dong, Peter gave the lady a 20,000 note.... instead of giving Peter the change the lady started saying 'tip, tip'! Peter said no, give me 10,000dong back please. The lady then said 'no, no you can have two more bananas! haha, at this point Peter was getting a wee bit annoyed, Lucy was just laughing at the whole scene. The lady carried on trying not to part with the change... so Peter ended up raising his voice.... "i do not want anymore stupid bananas, just give me my 10,000 change". The lady i think got the message and gave us our change back. Lucy was in tears of laughter at this point! After only being in Vietnam for a short space of time, we had realised that the vietnamese people weren't very friendly and were very pushy. They only seem friendly when they are trying to sell you something! We carried on with the walking tour, not the most exciting city in the world to be honest. We came to the end of the walking tour, and headed for an ice-cream parlour called 'Fanny' that we had seen the day before. Seen as we'd been out walking for the majority of the day in the crazy streets we treated ourselves to two spectacular desserts.
We decided that Hanoi wasn't really for us and that we should move on, so we booked a trip to Sapa for the next day off our pushy tour manager at our guesthouse! Before leaving to Sapa we just chilled out in a couple of bars and restaurants. Lucy also bought a scarf... which proved to be a very good purchase when we arrived in freezing temperatures of Sapa!
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