Back in Hanoi we had luckily pre booked a different hotel then the one we had been in before ha long bay. We had spoken to people on our tour of about prices for taxis to the airport as we were flying onto Laos after today. Everyone including our guide said 15 dollars was good but the company we had booked our ha long bay tour with had said 10 dollars we hadn't booked it at the time as we didn't know if it was a good deal. We decided after having such a good trip to go back to his shop to book the transfer. He wasn't there but the person in the shop rang him and I spoke to him on the phone. He booked our transfer and then invited us to celebrate with him and his tour company as it was Vietnams national day. He said there would be lots of free food there and I decided to agree usually there's a scam involved somewhere but the tour had been excellent and we were running out if money after keeping 10 dollars back for the airport transfer we only had about 2 dollars between us and we didn't want to get any more Vietnamese dong out as we were leaving the next day! So we went. They converted the shop into a little party place with lots if food and beer with about 10 people there. All Vietnamese. A trio of Dutch girls who could barely speak any English came for about ten mins and didn't eat any food they were rude but probably suspicious it was a scam. We ate so much food I felt sick and we also drank so much beer I now actually like beer! They would do a cheers every 5 mins and you would have to down 100 percent 50 % or 30% of your drink every time. We also drank out of glasses rather then individual beer bottles and every time we took a sip it would be filled up again making it difficult to judge how much we were drinking.

We then went on to a karaoke bar which played English and Vietnamese songs we were highly embarrassed and hate karaoke but they love it and take it very seriously. There must be one on every other street in Vietnam. We first sat in a place that had cushions on the floor but then got upgraded to a room with sofas and even an ensuite. We only did it out of politeness they put an English song on I had never even heard of and I tried my best but it was terrible. We had even more beers there and the night ended when the boss threw up so we all called it a night( it was barely past midnight) and we had to be up at 6am for our transfer. We had such a good night and didn't pay a penny. It was a nice end to Vietnam which had some of the nicest but also some of the not nicest people we've met in all our travels