Lunchtime we flew from Luang Prabang to Hanoi. The flight was pretty swift and by the time we had been given and finished our snacks and drinks, we were preparing for landing! Once arriving in Hanoi, we hopped on a 'minibus', which turned out to be a standard seven seater and with all our rucksacks in the boot, this meant that me and Jessie were on top of each other at the back. After a very confusing effort to find a hotel, after routing for one in Nicola's book that no longer existed, we settled for the golden flower hotel. The woman was kind enough to give us a $30 room for two for $35 for four people. She said she likes to support student travellers :). Four in one room? No problameo. Me, Nic, Isaac, Ben, done. Two mattresses on the floor (leaving us no space for anything else) and we were set, saving us £5 each for the night. We had dinner at some third story riverside restaurant. Me and Isaac almost bought a snakes head dish, until we found out snakes head is a type of fish, we were very disappointed. After dinner with a beautiful view of the massive lake, we went off to find some bars.


Traffic in Hanoi is so much worse than Bangkok! There are so many more bikes and just general driving all over the shop. Most roads are one way but many people don't give a s*** and just drive down it anyway. Also for some reason it seemed a custom for the locals to crowd the pavements on plastic chairs eating sunflower seeds and boozing.


We asked the guy at the hotel where the bars were and he said down the road to the left (with a cheeky grin on his face). When we got there it seemed apparent to be a gay bar. Hahaha. Strange gay bar though with 'gay' guys grinding on girls? Not sure exactly what was going down in there... Maybe best to not know. After Sam could take no more, we moved on and an old cockney geezer from our hotel showed us the way (after a wee bit of confusion) to a good strip of bars. We went to a bar lounge and had some cocktails, but after some time the Vietnamese police rocked up and told everyone to leave... Not sure what that was about but we didn't question it and left. The bartender said it was bulls*** and that we could come back in five after they seemingly closed up, but we decided against it as the Vietnamese po po look pretty official and we'd rather not rot in a foreign prison! So we went back to the hotel to enjoy some cartoons.