Good morning vietnam and goodbye is the topic of today. I write this having now arrived in luang prabang, Laos and having to catch up on Hanoi and the boat trip to halong bay (this will be on a separate blog).

Anyway let's get down to it, Hanoi was enjoyable and split into two visits as we spent 2/3 days there first then we took a 3 day boat trip to halong bay and came back for a further 2nights.

On our arrival to Hanoi we were greeted with sunshine and temperatures around the 20 mark but the main relief was that there was no rain. We checked into the very welcoming and pleasant hostel called 'travelmate hanoi' and duly did our usual of scouting the local area. A very pleasant town/city welcomed us but the usual issues of the crazy traffic were never to far away. Another location means another beer and although beer Hanoi is not the greatest I have to say the beer 'hallida' was a pleasent and cheap drop which remained with me the rest of the stay. There is not a road in Hanoi that is not full of Market stalls but each road seems to have a theme of selling things. For example you might have a road just full of food markets and then round the corner on the next road it sells just carpets. Apparently this has been this was how it was done around 500 years ago and I guess if it's not broke don't fix it. We enjoyed the first night having a meal onto a rooftop restaurant where you could overlook the crazy array of motorcycles weaving around each other which I still don't tire of watching. The views can be nice Hoan Kiem Lake close by. The lake contains a pavilion known as 'Tortoise tower' which is the lake of the restored sword. The name refers to the legend of the 15th century hero Le Loi whose miraculous swore was swallowed by a golden turtle. Apparently the turtle has appeared after this much like the Loch Ness myth but we all love a bit of fantasy now an again.

Tina enjoyed the shopping which followed in our walk around on the following day and she duly involved herself in haggling for various items. The one aspect that Tina has not enjoyed so much in Vietnam has been the food which I can understand given that a lot of it contains a broth with usually noodles and then either beef, chicken or pork. On some of the markets they do actually eat dog and cat and they can be seen hanging up much like you would see duck/chicken hanging up in Chinatown. Obviously with this in mind it can be difficult to entertain the idea of food in some areas and the dishes without meat seem to be slim pickings. However we went into plenty of little shops/Market areas where they would let you try various sweets and fruit without any further thought to what rover or lassie meat would taste like.

Although we did alot more I kind of want to get cracking on writing about halong bay on my next blog so I'll skip forward to our arrival back in Hanoi after the trip. Let's just say it didn't go as planned, the friendly hostel we returned to was not quite the same as they had given our room away to someone else. Why oh why they don't write things down is beyond me but they sorted a rather cold feeling hotel room next door so we had a place to stay on our return and would return there the following morning. Surprise, surprise we trekked back over the following morning and they didn't have any rooms again so my first argument of the trip ensued which was partly down to having no coffee. It's actually quite amusing having an argument with someone he speaks limited English while I try and signal to him and 2 others at the hostel the benefits of use a pen to write down bookings. I have a feeling that neither party will learn anything from the experience. It meant we ended up walking around Hanoi for another hostel who duly took our custom but meant I could enjoy a bath in what I could only describe was the size of thimble. Anyway I think Tina felt more slated by the experience and was a case of just ticking off some further sights before we made our journey to the airport the following morning.

Right that's Hanoi done, now onto halong bay where a quality time was had indeed!

Robbie c out.

By the way I've not checked this blog so grammatical mistakes will be plentiful but I just wanted to get this done so no comments please.