So the train arrived at 5.15 am this morning - the sun was just rising and the city was beginning to come to life. We decided to walk to the hotel we stayed at last time as it was really cheap which took 30minsto get there, and on arriving they told us they were full - on hindsight we should have booked it when we stayed last time but we didnt think of that, so we ended up in a hotel across the road. We slept until 11am then wandered around the city again. We went to the lake in Hanoi and walked around it and checked out the little pagoda in the middle. In the afternoon we walked across town to visit the Ho chi Minh museum (Ho Chi Minh was the leader of Vietnam loved by many people) so we wanted to find out more about him. However the museum was more like a modern art gallery with abstract displays and pictures and very little translated into english. We came out of the museum knowing no more than we did about him when we went in. We walked baclk past the Royal Palace and through the citadel. In the evening we went to the beer crossroads where local home brewed beer is sold for 3000dong a glass which equates to about 10pence! gill was loving it but as Mel doesnt drink beer she bought some vodka and poured itiinto lemonade at each stop :) We then went up the street to get chattingto some girls enquiring where 'Le Pub' was and as we happened to know we took them there and stayed for a couple of drinks. They were calling it a night so we headed to another pub for toilet stop, acquired 2 multi coloured sombreros (i cant spell) and then hit the beer crossroads where we got chatting to loads of people who were admiring our hats - especially a guy from Texas who was trying to teach us to talk with a southern american accent - that was fun! Slowly people started to disappear and we realised it was 11.45 - in Hanoi there is a 12am curfew and no one is allowed on the streets so that put a stop to our night this evening.

Fri 17th - today we are flying to HCMC so we headed to airport for 12pm as flight was at 2.15 - cutting a long story short, our flight had been cancelled and we had been moved onto one two hours later so we had to hang around inthe airport - luckily time passed really quickly. Because of our booking problem earlier in the week we didnt manage to get seats beside each other - we both ended up sitting by weird Vietmanes guys - they take up far too much elbow space and as Gill and I were both sitting at window seats - they felt it neccessary to lean across us in order to see out of the window! how rude! apart from that flight was good and we realised that the 2 hour flight was the longest time we had spent apart so far which was a weird feeling.

xox