Our 24 hour bus journey from Vientiane that was meant to be horrendous actually turned out quite well, both me and Sarah had a spare seat next to us and a small amount of valium helped us to a full nights sleep!Immediately we noticed that Vietnam is much more populous and there is a huge military presence around, every 5 minutes or so you will see someone in army uniform!!

Our hotel in Hanoi is really nice, we even had a bath in the room - luxury!! After a relaxing first night (we didn't venture out too far) we decided to go to see Ho Chi Minh in his mausoleum - when we got there it was closed, we were pretty dissapointed but it'll teach us to read guidebooks more thoroughly! We ended up going to the Temple of Literature instead, it was really interesting, beautiful old Chinese-style buildings, built in the 11th-century, it was Vietnam's first University, dedicated to Confucius.

After that we strolled around the town, risking our lives every time we crossed the road!! The traffic is extremely heavy, bikes, buses, mopeds cars coming at you from all angles, it helps to make eye contact and walk confidently across the road in front of the traffic, easier said than done! We passed a statue of Lenin and wandered around some shops before having lunch looking over Hoan Kiem Lake and The Huc Bridge, which has old legends about a magical sword used to drive the Chinese out of Vietnam that was taken from the King by a giant golden tortoise and restored to its divine owners deep below the lakes surface. As a result turtles (and tortoises) are considered to be lucky animals and when you see a statue of one here you should rub its head for good luck - lets hope the luck rubs off and we get Glastonbury tickets!! Our long walk finished at one of the biggest, busiest and craziest markets I have ever seen - Dong Xuan Market, it is huge!

In the evening we got some tickets to go and see the traditional Vietnamise and apparently world famous Water Puppetry. The best way of describing it is interesting - quite difficult to follow as we speak no Vietnamese but the scenes were based on traditional Vietnamese life and it was pretty entertaining. Pretty unusual although it had a few similarities with Punch and Judy - Sarah kept wanting to shout 'it's behind you!'

Hope you are well,

Love A&S xxx