Hi All

We found a slightly better internet place so will try to catch you up on what's been happening. Hanoi is a total culture shock. We spent the first couple of days havingto work ourselves up to going outside of the hotel. Even crossing the road to buya bottle of water took much consideration. That said we are now in the swing of things. We mastered crossing the road (which requires suspending all your previous views on road safety), we got some culture (the army museum was best - interesting having learnt about the Vietnam war in school to find out about the American war - same thing, different perspective), we almost got ripped off by our driver but fought back andwalked away feeling triumphant, saw the water puppets (a bit naff really) went on a cyclo tour of the old quarter of Hanoi - very good thing to do, great fun and a good way to see the cityand got very wet in a downpour. We missed HoChi Min's tomb but will see that on the couple of days when we are back in Hanoi after Sapa.

Fun thing that is keeping us entertained is looking for the wackiest thing on the back of a motorbike. So far we have seen 3 adults and a new born baby, plumbing style piping, 3 electrical fans,reems of A3 paper and about 6 sacks of what looked like rice. The winner by far was a fridge. Yep, a fridge. And we got a pic of it too. Will try to post some photos up soon so you can see yourself.

We also went to this fantastic resturant Bobby Chis (currently fighting with amanda about what the resturant was called) - anyhoo great resturnat, a bit pricy by Vietnam standards but it would hold its own as a tier one resturant in Sydney. And, we finally got a drink of really really cold water -tepid water sucks.

Going to try to upload some photos and then will do a seperate blog about the past couple of days in Halong Bay.