We left our lovely hotel at 8.30am for the 4 hour journey back to Hanoi, the capital, and our last stop on our tourL.The bus stopped halfway for a rest break at this large tourist/souvenir centre which sold everything from jewelry to paintings, to massive stone sculptures, all of which were made by disabled people right there.It was class, so many beautiful things, and they shipped world-wide! For like $300, so of course, as usual, we bought nothingL.

We arrived in Hanoi around lunch time, and the traffic is CRAZY!! We thought we'd seen it all but Hanoi is crazy and then some.Zun told us there are around 6million lived in Hanoi, and there are 3million motorbikes in Hanoi!!Jack took us on an orientation walk, which was totally confusing!Stopped at a local Vietnamese restaurant for food, which was great, and cheap, but guess what was playing on the cd player - Irish music!Brian Kennedy was wailing out 'you raise me up'- so weird sitting in Vietnam listening to that!

After Lunch we walked around a bit more, seeing some of the lakes before attending a well known Hanoi show - the Water Puppet show!! Now half of our group thought it was awful but we kind of liked it, it was pretty weird but cool to see, and although it was in Vietnamese, we could kind of keep up with the story line! Kind of now, not totally!After this we went back to the hotel, for a shower and a quick nap before dinner at 7pm, and woke up at 3am in the morning!!!We totally slept through the evening! We obviously needed it though as we both fell back asleep till 8am!

Woke up to our last day of our GAP Adventure tour, feeling quite sad!We got up and decided to be cultural and go visit the Ho Chi Minh Museum, which to be honest was pretty boring! Very little English translations! Although we did mange to figure out that Ho Chi Minh was very interested in education!We both wanted to go to the mausoleum to see the body (sick I know!) but it turns out Uncle Ho is on holiday in Russia at the minute! Raging!We got a motorbike ride to Hoa Lo Prison, AKA Hanoi Hilton, which originally detained Vietnamese prisoners and later on held American pilots who were shot down in Hanoi.This included Senator John McCain, who was shot down over Truc Bac Lake, which was right behind our hotel!It was pretty interesting, they had John McCains flight suit he was wearing when he was shot down on display.Our motorbike guide dropped us off after at Hoan Kiem lake in the centre of the city, Craig says its similar to a mini Lake Bled as it has an island in the middle with a temple on it, and there's a small pagoda just on the lake aswell, it was very pretty but at this point the heat was getting to us so we went to a wee coffee shop for a club sandwich and iced coffee for Craig (which he is addicted to), and a banana cake and sprite for me!

We walked back to the hotel after to chill before our farewell dinner (we didn't fall asleep this time) and headed to another local restaurant.Met the 2 newcomers who were doing the Roam Laos part of the tour - Ross from Bangor and Fran from England, who were on there way back home after 2 years in Australia.They were really cool, pity we couldn't have got spending longer with them, was nice to hear the home accent too!After dinner we went for a drink at Hoi Corner where everyone sits on tiny stools in the street drinking beer poured from kegs sitting on the footpath!It was such a class atmosphere and the beers were 4,000 Vietnamese dong which is about 25p each!!After our beers we headed to Karaoke beside the hotel.Jack had booked us a private room and it turned out to be brilliant fun - even thought the singing wasn't exactly good!It seems to be the way it is done out here - with each party hiring a private room rather than getting up on stage in front of people!There are Karaoke bars everywhere over here and they seem to be really into it…especially their slow love songs….and Britney Spears!

Our last night had drawn to a close so we got some final snaps with the group and Jack the legend and said our goodbyes before heading up to bed.We have had an amazing time on our GAP Adventure and have been able to experience things we would otherwise not have been able to if we had not had Jack!Big thank you to you mate for everything you did for us and showed us!Everyone should do a GAP Adventure….I know we def will be again and make sure you ask for Jack Thy aka Buddha!!

It was weird waking up the next morning knowing everyone was away and scary to think that we were now on our own in SE Asia!!Fairly uneventful day spent hanging around the hotel and checking in for flights online ahead of our trip to Bangkok!Hopefully we will be able to cope on our own after being spoiled for so long!!

Craig and Laura =)