Hanoi not to be confused with Hoi An

Hanoi is a lot less built up than Saigon and much less chaotic. Although motorbikes still line the streets wherever you go and crossing the street is still a potential death trap. Since Vietnam is all geared up for backpackers - you get on a bus outside your hostel and it drops you off outside another hostel, so unless you have a strange desire to wander the streets of a new city with a heavy rucksack, it's easy enough to just follow the trail of breadcrumbs that they leave.

The hostel was in the old quarter which is made up of hundreds of streets each selling one or two products. Rumour has it that the streets are or used to be named after whatever product is being sold. Since we can't read vietnamese we cannot confirm or deny these rumours. Can't be too good for business though when you are trying to sell mops and the twenty stores either side of you are also trying to sell mops!?

We spent one day looking around the city - there's the famous lake where the golden tortoise..."Legend said that in the first of 15th century Heaven gave a precious sword to Le Loi who rose against Ming. With the sword he drove Chinese out of Vietnam. After the war he returned the sword to familiar of divine the giant golden tortoise lived in the lake. Since then the lake has had a new name Ho Hoan Kiem (Lake of Restored Sword). " (quote from someone else's blog) We visited this lake which is a lot smaller than you'd imagine it to be and the temple on an island where they supposedly have an embalmed giant tortoise but the signs are a bit vague and just say "it was made...." and it didn't look to real either - not that I know what an embalmed giant tortoise should look like mind.

We visited the cathedral and walked to the Temple of Literature in the rain which wasn't the most enjoyable experience of my life but we did see a fallen down tree on the way back (it just fell down for no reason whatsoever), the firemen were there cutting it up to get it out of the road...not that this stopped the traffic from getting by - they used the pavement instead and had the cheek to look at me and Ayms as if we were stupid for walking on the path?! Hello! So it took us a while to realise that there was actually a motorbike underneath the tree, it's miracle that there wasn't anymore considering how busy it seemed. There was nobody with the bike though, so they must have made it out ok.

The highlight of our stay in Hanoi was meeting up with James and Rachel again - we met them in our first few days in China and have been a few steps behind ever since. They had discovered the cheapest drinking establishment in all of Hanoi which looked a bit like the plastic chairs you get at playgroup on the pavement outside someone's shop/house with a beer barrel and a lady selling glasses of beer for 2000vnd (7p) the bottles of vodka 1 pound and sprite 5000vnd for a bottle. Bargain huh! We sat there till closing just in time for the rains to start again and then we parted ways once again. Since the "pub" didn't have any toilets you were pointed in the direction of the public toilets which were situated down an alleyway not far from the "pub". FInding this alley was an experience in itself, as was peeing in the dark and then having to pay for the privelage!

Our last two days were spent in Halong Bay. The trip could take up to 15-20 people, our boat had five people on it. Me, Amy, Gerry (guitarist in The Belushis, in case they ever get famous), Roland and Kathryn. We spent the first day visiting a cave and the afternoon swimming in the bay and jumping off the boat. There was another boat that also had a small group of people and in the evening we joined up with them and spent the evening not doing karaoke even though there had been promise of it earlier on. So the only reason I mention that is because we met the funniest Italian man ever who resembled the cartoon character from the halifax adverts and made us cry with laughter - and I can't even remember what was so funny anymore :) It rained most of the two days we were on the boat so we never really saw Halong Bay in all its glory but we got eaten by mosquitos instead which was equally as exciting.