We left Bangkok early for our flight and soon landed in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, with a shock as the temperature was a chilly 17'C, very cold for us! We had booked a dorm room and were excited as we were meeting Fran and Paul in a couple of days at the same hotel. In the taxi our driver was on the phone a lot and didn't seem to know where our hotel was, eventually he dropped us off and a man told us that our hotel was full but the sister hotel had space. Despite our tiredness we knew and had heard of this scam before so left pronto and found our hotel with our room still available, slightly annoyed that they tried to fool us pros.

The rest of the day was spent trying to get used to the mayhem that is Vietnam and all the scooters and bikes everywhere, which also transport live chickens, pigs, goats, and pretty much anything else you can think of on them. We were told to just walk into the road whilst the bikes are coming towards you and they will go around you, scary at first but if you didn't go you would literally never cross a road!! The next two days we spent it exploring around, on foot of course. We visited the Lake in the centre which has a temple in it too, despite the hussle surrounding it the lake is peacefull so we sat around with our 20p ice cream and even had to talk with local students so they could practise their English, and we didn't charge them anything!!! The musuem was closed so we wandered through the French quarter and the buildings were so pretty and treated ourselves to a cake from the bakery. The next stop was The Temple Of Literature which was pretty and we learnt how it was the original University in Vietnam and the King used to read the final exam questions to the students. After all the walking we saved the rest of the sights for the following day and headed back to get some food and watched a film in our hotels cinema room.

We were so pleased to be in Vietnam as most hotels have breakfast included again, something we have missed, so we made the most of it and it was so good. They made our eggs fresh however we wanted and were so friendly, like everyone else so far here. We walked again to another temple and the ladies which sell fruit, using the scales balanced on their shoulders, approached us and put their hat and fruit scales on us, took a picture which was funny and then forced us to buy a bannana but it was worth it for a good snap! We saw the heavily guarded presidents palace, the flagship, the one pillar pagoda and ended the day with a one pound beer on a rooftop overlooking the lake. That evening we tried the local street food of fried pork balls and chips which looked so tasty but when they arrived we noticed they had a sugar coating on, interesting but we won't be trying them again! This morning Megan woke up extra early as she was very excited that Fran and Paul were arriving so we put the welcome sign up and you can probably imagine the screams when we saw each other!!! They trusted us to show them around so we had more ice creams and beers and tried to catch up with the last 5 months of our travels, it was so good to see them.

We booked our Halong Bay boat trip for the next day and got some rest ready for our 'Party Boat'. Halong bay is a world heritage site and also one of the natural wonders of the world and we had booked 2 days 1 night cruising round! Even though the skies weren't clear when we arrived on the party boat and started sailing we saw how beautiful it is, going between some of the 1962 islets that are in the bay. Our 'party' boat was already out of control with all 12 of us onboard and we knew that the Vietnamese guide "Lucky" was going to be a legend. Paul worked his magic and got and upgrade, all of our cabins were lovely but we ended up spending most of the time on the sun deck. We visited a cave in the afternoon and had wine and fruit and then we could jump off of the boat and into the water to cool off. Easier said than done when it is 6m high I was scared, meg was already in followed by everyone apart from poor Fran, who must have spent around 30 minutes on the edge debating it and finally she took the plunge. Then it was time for dinner which we were looking forward to after our amazing seafood lunch, it didn't disappoint and there was so much food we were stuffed. Of course we had more room for beer and so it began, lots of funny drinking games including meg winning herself a beer and paul winning a press up competition. We ended the night by murdering kareoke songs with another couple and also finding Paul's talent of singing Vietnamese love songs!! The next day after a great breakfast and some kayaking we left the halong 'party boat' and arrived back in Hanoi ready for our first night bus in Vietnam! Lots of love Amy and Meg xxx