We arrived in Hanoi early in the morning, so it was straight to be for a few hours, before heading out on our orientation walk. Hanoi is a lively and bustling city, just crossing the road is an event, but a fun one. We are situated in the Old Quarter a strange mix of narrow colonial style buildings with the odd oriental gate way and temple mixed in. It is an exciting place to walk around, with loads of interesting shops and buildings to look at, but you need to be careful as most of the time you are walking on the road, as the pavements are taken up by street vendors and parked mopeds.

We organised to go out on a motorbike tour of the city with 8 others from our group that day, so we all met at the hotel and were introduced to our drivers, helmeted up and off we went into the slightly crazy traffic of Hanoi. With a convey on 10 motorbikes it was a huge amount of fun, you don't go very fast and it was a great way to see the city, weaving through the traffic and tiny side streets. We stopped a few times so we could take pictures of interesting sites and were able to visit the Hoa Lo prison.

The prison was originally built by the French during their rule of the country and used to hold political Vietnamese prisoners. It was also the home of former US President hopeful John McCain during the war. After snaking through some more narrow alleyways we reached a square with a pond in the middle and in the pond was a wreckage of part of US plane which was shot down during the war.

Tonight was our last night with our group leader Suzy and also four of our group, so we all met up for dinner and headed to a roof terrace restaurant and sat down for a banquet meal. We then went to a typical Hanoi watering hole, basically some plastic chairs on the street and some great tasting local beer at very cheap prices. It was great watching the nightlife, the locals carrying on as usual and the tourists clearly enjoying the reasonably priced drinks.

It was a great first day in Hanoi and we couldn't wait to continue exploring tomorrow.

Sunday 5th April

Unfortunately no lie-in for us today, as the walls in this hotel are no exception to the thin wall rule and we could hear one of our group members singing in the shower. There was nothing for it, but to get up and head to a local café for a cup of tea and some toast. Which was a real treat as in China they have sweet bread and in Vietnam previously we had just been given bread rolls.

We walked around the city and saw Ho Chi Minhs mausoleum from the outside, as we weren't really interested in going in, the one pillar pagoda, the temple of literature and by now it had started to rain so we headed for some shelter and lunch.That night we met our Vietnamese leader Phat and also the new 5 new members of our group. We opted out of the group dinner, as we had already booked to go somewhere else. The 69 Bar was a small restaurant in the Old Quarter, we had booked a table on the balcony, it was very romantic and the food was amazing. The best restaurant and best meal of the trip so far. So if anyone is heading to Hanoi you must go there.