So I have been in Hanoi for 3 days now. The hostel is great lots of different people from all over the world, thankfully for me English seems to be the international language. The people in Hanoi are all very friendly and everything is very cheap.
The traffic in the city is frightening, I was getting really worried about the prospect of cycling. The german cycle tourer was quite reassuring, but the traffic was still my biggest concern. The longer I watched the traffic the less I wanted to cycle in it. Any way yesterday I braved it with a fellow traveller from the hostel. We took to the roads to do some sight seeing. To start with it was terrifying! Once we got the hang of the anything goes rules of the road we were fine, we cycled for about 4hrs around the city, found a huge lake cycles around that, even managed to negotiate a 4lane motorway- this seems quite acceptable on bikes!

It is very cold here in Hanoi, around 10o. I had not planned for such cold weather. I have been wearing everything I own for the past 4days-nice. And the absence of a hairdryer is still causing me distress.

The food here is great, I'm mainly eating noodle soup in one form or another, with spring rolls. All a bit too carbie and not vegetablie enough if I'm being fussy, but delicious all the same. They are better at doing coffee in vietnam than hong kong- the hostel has strong black coffee on offer all day- love it! And happy hr with free beer every evening- mezin!

Looking forwards to Roo arriving on Saturday.