To get to Hanoi from Hue was meant to be a 11 hour bus ride so thinking it was going to be more knowing the vietnamese organisation we took another sleeper bus which left around 6:30pm from Hue. The journey was comfortable as the beds were longer and had a tv but it played a dodgy dubbed jackie chan fil film for two hours but it was ok and i thought we could do this journey no probs. Well How niave was I - I was awoken at 5am becoz the cops pulled over the bus in the middle of nowhere and there was about 5 of them all in military style uniform raiding the bus to which i thought they were looking for drugs, i s*** myself because this guy was loitering around by my bed on a phone and then went to the back of my bed quickly and i thought he stuffed some drugs behind me. At this point he leaves and a copper is walking up the isle with a torch and looking at my bed, i couldnt check the bed because i didnt want to draw attention to myself and i was s***ting myself, my heart was pounding and i had visons of me in a nam prison getting my hands chopped off. Anyway he briefly searched by my bed and thats was it so panic over and then i checked my bag area later and there was nothing there. For 4 hours this went on and it turns out some locals were smuggling animals on board, so the bus was impounded and we had to take a minibus to hanoi which took another 5-6 hours and it was bloody freezing and the bus was packed to the rafters and i had no leg room and the driver was still picking up locals on the way, they have no common sense out here. When we arrived in Hanoi i was shivering because i only had a zip jacket, shorts and flops on and we couldnt get a taxi for love no money. We eventually got one and went to the nearest area where all the backpackers stay to get cheap accomodation. As we arrived it was the TET festival and everyone goes to the north to celibrate the new year so everywhere was packed or the hotles were charging silly money for poor standard accomodation. Eventually we found one and the cheapest we could get it was $10 a night but it had no heating and a dodgy shower that has hot water sometimes, but we had a tv with all the channels so it was good for something. I thought i was going to die in that room in mysleep it was that cold and the wierd thing is they dont have any insulation in the room either they had holes in the wall for ventillation that you could clearly here the street outside. So to go to sleep i wore 5 t-shirts, 2 pairs of socks,a wooly hat, a zip up jacket and trousers and even then i woke up a bit chilly, but the wierd thing is you just get used to it so because we had no choice we got on with it and you dont really notice it after a while..........