Day 9

We left Bangkok at silly o clock and were heading for Vietnam, Ryan slept from take off to landing..still recovering from a Koh San Road hangover?! Many thousand more AirAsia miles later anmd a stress free airport led us into a false sense of security. Hanoi is MENTAL. Much cooler than the other places we've been which is welcome but the sun tan plan has gone out the window! A pretty scary taxi journey into the city and we found somewhere to stay. Mikes Place. We were told there was no lift so would room 303 be okay. No problem - until we dicovered that room 303 is on the 8th floor, in the attic! Pretty hard going with rucksacks.

Anyway, in the first 4 hours in Hanoi we managed to walk miles, enjoy milkshakes sat on street chairs no bigger than a potty, visit two museums, get ripped off by a taxi driver, to then get into a taxi with a drunk driver (this is not illegal!), eat unidentified meat and veg in a locals only cafe, nearly get knocked over countless times, arrange a trip to Halong Bay and after a little stress of not being able to get money ended up with millions of Dong in our pockets.

We are both completly shell shocked and although stressful at time, think the chaos of Hanoi is brilliant. Not for the faint hearted! We spent the evening watching the city go by to prepare for the 4 hour journey tomorrow to Halong Bay.