My first impressions of Hanoi were...well that it was freezing! It was immediately clear we would need to invest in some warm jumpers! Our backpackers wardrobe did not exactly fit the bill for this cold. All other travellers seemed to be in the same boat as they were wandering around trying to improvise with what they had. That first day I pretty much had to layer everything I had on. What I would have done for a nice pair of boots!....or anything that actually covered my toes. Now I know that socks with sandals is a big fashion faux pas but at this time fashion really wasn't coming into consideration!

The next thing I noticed was how busy it was. There were motorbikes absolutely EVERYWHERE! I'm lucky I didn't get knocked down but there were a few close calls. They really seem to come at you from every angle and there seems to be no rules whatsoever. It was coming up to the Chinese New Year so it was doubly busy and a lot of buzz. There were lots of new year decorations everywhere and all the locals were preparing for the holiday.

I liked Hanoi immediately. There was something about it that was really interesting and diffferent to all the other places we've been. The first nght we went out for dinner and ran into a couple of people we had met in Vang Vieng in Laos. Its crazy, we travel over 25hours into another country and can still meet people we know. Thats what I love about travelling though. So many people seem to be doing the same route, it's always nice to bump into other people and hear about their travels.

We spent a couple of days in Hanoi then went north to Halong Bay for a night. We then came back to Hanoi for another day. We spent our time generally wandering the streets exploring what Hanoi had to offer. There is a big lake in the centre of the city which is described as the heart and soul of Hanoi. It was really pretty there and we took several walks around it. Our friend Carl who we met in Vang Vieng was also in Hanoi at this time so we all had dinner a few times and had some intense games of Jenga, Spoons and UNO. There were some really nice restaurants and I've discovered I really like Vietnamese food. Because it was Chinese New Year it meant a lot of the local attractions were closed. This was a bit dissapointing. However we did get to see a lot of the celebrations which was good. Because we had been in Halong Bay for the actual turn of the new year we missed the fireworks on the lake. However the next night when we were back in Hanoi we took a walk round the lake and got to see all the big lights and decorations. There were also lots of stages with performances going on, singing, dancing, acrobatics and even performing monkeys! It was really exciting and I felt lucky we were in Hanoi at that time to see it all.