We knew we had to get up early for the Halong Bay boat trip so we thought we would check out the roof top bar of the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel where we would be staying after the boat trip and a have a couple of beers, but get an early night! Yeah like that was going to happen! We got to the bar and had never seen anything like it, we got there at around 8 ish and everyone was smashed already! That's when we knew we had found the proper travellers, after being in Hong Kong and only meeting a handful of English speaking people!

We stood out like sore thumbs as we were obviously sober and we were the newbies to the hostel, everyone is so friendly, you can approach anyone and just start talking and everyone comes up to you and starts talking! It didn't take us long to realise we were out for the long haul after everyone insisted we came out on the bar crawl which happens every night! There is beer pong, a giant jenga (drinking version) and other drinking games, Next thing we knew we had caught up with most people and were pretty drunk! Nearly forgot to mention the prices, drinks are so cheap, a beer is 30000 Vietnamese Dong which is 87p and there is a happy hour every other hour, after the beers, we have taken a fancy to rum and coke, which is also 30000 Dong! Happy Days!

So off on the bar crawl we went, first stop is the sister version of our hostel with a bigger bar where you stay for a while and meet up with everyone from that hostel, again everyone just talks to everyone like we are all best mates. Everyone has that one thing in common, travelling, so the conversation just flows! By this time we had met David, from Nottingham, he has been travelling alone for 18 months and has no plans to stop! He is now sticking with us for a bit, travelling down Vietnam!

We then stop at two more bars and end up in a club by the river! The details slow down a bit now as obviously the memories aren't that clear, just a lot of dancing, drinking and chatting! We ended up getting back to our hostel at about 5 am, ready for 2 hours sleep before we had to get up at 7 for the Boat trip.