Landing in Hanoi with ten times the amount of motorbikes around you than in Ho Chi Minh City, it was a mad trip from the airport to the hotel; but for some reason we did manage to get chauffeur driven with complementary water too. The first evening we went to the Water Puppet show. It was definitely worth seeing and the length of the show was just right seeing as it wasn't in English. We all managed to pick up bits of the storyline-I think! We had a few days in Hanoi so we spent the next day on a day trip to Ha Long Bay. Wow! This was lovely! We were so lucky to have a clear, sunny day so that we could see everything- which was just as well as it had taken four whole hours to get there. We jumped aboard a boat, had a wonderful seafood lunch and hopped on and off smaller boats to visit various caves in the bay (where some of the James Bond films were filmed) and enjoyed the mystical views in the sun.

The following day we visited the Ho Chi Minh museum and the mausoleum. Unfortunately the mausoleum was closed (we had missed it by five minutes due to our lay in-oops!). We did however go back to this on our last day. I'm not sure what to make of it really; Ho Chi Minh lying in a coffin for everyone to see (I'm not convinced it was actually his body-but from what I'm told his body gets sent to Russia for 3 months each year to be restored)….People around me were crying and the sense of a communist country was shown for the first time.

Day 3 and we took another guided tour (clearly we love these things) to Hoa Lu. Here was the ancient citadel of Vietnam home to the temples at the Ninh Binh province. The drive here was interesting to say the least and to be honest it was more like a building site, with houses and roads being built left, right and centre. Next stop was Tam Coc where we had a rather dodgy looking lunch (flies hovering around the buffet plates) and took a little boat, rowed by a local with her feet, along the river with mountains and rice paddies either side of the river. It was a beautiful ride; however some of it was spoilt by the constant pestering of locals picture taking (they then appeared at the end of our trip to sell the pics to us) and t-shirt selling. Oh and the best scam as of yet was someone selling drinks from another boat, asking you to buy one for your lady rower. We knew only too well that the can of drink would be given back to the original person at the end of the day so that they could resell it the following day! We weren't falling for this and instead gave our lady a bottle of water that we had taken along and some sweets too. Towards the end our lady almost forced us to tip her (which originally we were going to do) but because she asked so bluntly, multiple times, it was just that one step too far, so we stepped off the boat pretty promptly without looking back-she must have loved us!... To be honest it did make me a little angry to think that she probably gets at least $10 a day from tips, souvenir selling etc. which is around $280 a month, which I know is not a lot but when families from ABC's in Cambodia are living off less than $1 a day and trying to make honest businesses without asking for money, to me it's not fair.

On our very last day we witnessed a YouTube worthy event. Balloon sellers in the street were suddenly in conflict with a few other people, for a reason we didn't know. Balloons were flying everywhere and the area around them filled up with swarms of people, motorbikes and bikes. Someone was pushed to the floor and another person ran away armed with balloons. In no time (and weirdly, as if they were watching) a little police van rolled up, chucked someone inside and drove off. It was over in the space of five minutes. Shame I didn't have my camera at the ready!

Hanoi had a good buzz, a busy one, and I think we spent just about the right length of time here to fit everything in. I can't believe it was time to say goodbye to the Parents again! It was hard but knowing what there was to come made it better. So now, writing this, I'm currently sat in my room writing this blog and packing to fly to Thailand to meet Will-I can't wait! Bangkok New year here we come!

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