So we were tyrekking through Hanoi with guide book in hand heading to find a hostel - the one we wanted was fullso we plodded on to another- room wasnt amazing but we stopped anyway, dumped our bags and headed to a cafe to grab a drink. As we were sitting there it started to rain, then it got heaveir and ended up being a full blown thunder storm, the street outside quickly turned from a road into a river, and we thought it was bad in Hue. This time the river came up to peoples knees, cars and mtorbikes were conking out - and shops were becoming flooded - it was pure craziness! The shop people were getting very angry with bikes and cars that drove along the road quickly as this caused qwaves of water to flood into their shop. It took about an hour for the water to drain away and become safe for us to leave! We then went for a wander around the streets of Hanoi and stumbled across a market being set up so we had some tea and went to te market after. The market was in Hanoi as it was a special holiday and all the locals were out. MArket was so busy thatw e were concerned for our bags but they were fine. We didnt really buy much - Mel bought a red vietmanese tee-shirt. We had had a long day so went back to hostel and asked for a/c control for our room but they said we had to pay alot more for it - we were not appy bunnies but ended up paying for that night and planned to leave the next day.

Sun 12th - So after breakfast this morning we went in search of an alternative hotel - we found one - couldnt exactly say it was nicer this one was kind of like a prison cell - but we liked it and the staff seemed real friendly. We picked up our bags from ld place, paid up and left. He asked us where we were heading to and was shocked when we replied another hostel! In order to see the real Hanoi we decided to hire a cyclo for an hour and got him to take us around all the back streets. Hanoi was very different from anywhere else we had been so far - city not as built up. Also whole streets were set aside for one type of shops, e.g. shoes shops, hardware shop, whjich was kind of cute. We got our driver to drop us off at the train station as we were looking into the cost of making our own way to Sapa instead of going with a trip which works out quite expensive. We got the info and walked back into town and had lunch, only there to decide we would buy train tickets ourselves, so we had to walk back to train station and buy them.

We were tired from walking around in the heat so headed back to hotel and played cards etc for a wee while. Our tour guide from Halong had told us about this night market so we went to check it out only to realise when getting there it was the one we had stumbled upon the night before we just hadnt put 2 and 2 together! We wandered around trying to find some young people to hang with but it wasnt really happening for us that night! so we hit the sack!

Mon 13th - We had a nice long lie in today - and left the room at 12 as we had to check out. Hotels are good as they allow you to leave your luggage with them until you are actually leaving Hanoi. WE went to internet cafe to book flights to HCMC - Mel managed fine and Gill unfortunately didnt - the system crashed so we had to phone them for them to tell us theirs had crtashed too! so we spent the whole day trying to fix that and eventually we managed to get it booked. We went to another market today but didnt stay long as we were walking down the stairs, they were wet and Mel went flying and hurt her back so we went back to hostel to change. Mel's back was just a little bruised so not a biggy! The rest of the evening was spent chilling in a cafe passing time before the night train to Sapa.

Hanoi was nice to see and seemed quite chilled out but certainly was not our favourite destination so far

love xxxx