We got in at 5.30am having both slept reasonably well. Okay, Edd did his usual head hits pillow 10 seconds later he's asleep until morning, I woke up at 1am because of an emergency stop which nearly threw me off the bed and then struggled to get back to sleep.

The vultures descended again as we climbed off the train and we had to barge past the taxi drivers trying to get us to get a ride with them. We walked back to our hotel, which wasn’t far from the station, but couldn’t check in. Our room was dirty as the people from the night before had checked out super early, but the cleaners only arrived at 8am. They had a bathroom downstairs with a shower, which was the main objective of wanting to check into our room anyway, so we grabbed our bags out of their storage cupboard and peeled the manky clothing off our bodies. The hotel did laundry services, so Edd found the washing bag in his big back pack and we transferred the last 4 days worth of clothing into it for laundry. Everything stank of burnt wood, even my small backpack, so that was sent off for a good once over as well. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, until I was sure I no longer smelt of burnt wood; I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a shower so much in my life.

We sat in the restaurant area and I started catching up on blogs, drinking deliciously free coffee. At 8am they put menus in front of us and asked us what we wanted for breakfast; we both looked at each other and then at the waitress who said, 'its free, you can have anything you want!’ (my immediate reaction was a red Lamborghini, but I wasn’t sure she’d get the joke). We ordered 2 pancakes (like usual) and devoured them in seconds (again).

We were allowed to check into our room at 9.30am and dragged all our stuff up to the 6th floor. It was the same room as the one we’d stayed in before, but the next level up. Edd threw himself onto the bed and went to sleep, I sat and blogged until 1pm. I decided I needed a small nap and snuggled down for a little doze.

We got up at 2pm, ravenously hungry, and went in search of a supermarket: Edd had a bright idea to have a picnic next to the lake and get a box of red wine. I liked the way his sentence ended and immediately agreed. We were harassed by Vietnamese people that shone shoes for income. The issue was that I was wearing sandals and Edd was wearing slipslops. This did not deter them, however, as they hounded as along the streets, insulting our ’dirty’ shoes, telling us we needed them to clean them. They harassed you with scarves, taxi rides, food and trinkets; shining slipslops was just a step too far. The supermarket we headed for was hidden away, very inconspicuous, not a place you’d spot on the street and clock for future reference. The security guard pounced on Edd and told him to leave his tiny bottle of water at the door; it was nearly finished and we weren’t entirely sure what the point was, but there were a number of other water bottles there, so didn’t bother arguing.

We bought baguettes, ham, camembert cheese, a Kitkat, and a 3-litre box of heaven. Edd went to pay and I walked back to the entrance to grab the mini water bottle, not having thought to bring my travel cup, we were going to decant the wine into it. The guard whacked me twice on my right arm as I tried to leave the way we’d walked in and told me to leave via the exit. We weren’t allowed to go into he store and buy things with the water bottle, but when we wanted to leave, we had to fetch from the entrance and then walk through the store with it to the exit which was designed to loop back to where the entrance was. I was immediately irate and asked him what difference it made, he opted for selective understanding of English and stared at me blackly.

After walking out of the exit, we made our way across the rode to the lake. It seemed everyone else in Vietnam had the same idea, even though we were the only 2 people sporting a box of red wine and lunch. 30 minutes into our snack, a few Hanoi students approached us to help them with their English, they wanted to ask us a few questions and then listen to our replies to improve. After half an hour, I was over it and we were pulling teeth – they had exhausted all their ideas for topics of conversation and my baguette was getting eaten by ants; we said goodbye and continued with our wine. Another group of students approached us, asking if we spoke English, but we just stared at them blankly and then replied, ‘no ingis.’ There were loads of other westerners to speak to, we’d done our bit for the day.

At 5pm, we decided to walk back to our hotel, stumbling across an art centre close by. The bottom floor had nothing in it, so we climbed the escalators to the 2nd floor. It had a large array of Vietnamese art, clothing, crockery and toys. The 3rd floor was dedicated to watercolour while the 4th floor looked like a wedding we were crashing. We went back to the 2nd floor and bought 2 beautifully embroided artworks of Vietnamese people in rice fields and a boat on a lake. We were collecting gorgeous artworks for the walls of our-house-that-hasn’t-been-bought-yet. Edd managed to barter 10 000 Dong off the pictures, even though the girls were adamant that they couldn’t offer any discount. Scrooge.

We went back to our hotel room to pack as we were leaving early the next day and enquired about our washing. They said it was going to be later than they’d thought, probably around 8pm; so we sorted out what we could until then. We called down at 8pm and they said it was only going to be about 10 / 11pm now. The room looked like a war zone and we needed to pack our bags, but couldn’t with my small bag missing and half our clothes in the wash. Edd went downstairs and worked his magic. 30 minutes later we had clean washing and train tickets for the Wednesday.

I was exhausted, having not slept in the afternoon, but Edd was right as rain: ready for the day. His 3 hour nap had been both a blessing and a curse, the curse being that it was after 12am and he still wasn’t asleep.