Not a great night's zzzzzz, the bed was rock hard and I couldn't sort out a decent pillow, or combination of pillows, maybe I should be like Wendy and take my own!

 As we were leaving at 9am, breakfast was around 8ish. We were offered quite a spread at the buffet. Continental cheeses and meats, fresh fruit, pastries and a stupid toaster that I had to use three times to get my toast browned. We can send space vehicles to land on Mars but seem to be unable to perfect a toaster that consistently produces good quality toast.

 Paula was the only one there when I went down. She is over six ft tall and is an aeronautical engineer. Very impressive! She has coughed up the single supplement like me. The other four ladies have two rooms between them and we have a married couple, Martin and Rhonda. Personally I would hate to share a room with a complete stranger. Mirella is a very bubbly girl, very likeable and she's sharing with Celia. Celia works for some GPS manufacturing company called UBLOX and travels abroad a lot. She even has herself a fetching little burkha, in black of course, to wear when she visits the Middle East and Pakistan. She has a good sense of humour and is good company 

She turned up last for breakfast and was looking a bit twitchy. Turns out she had advanced her watch by an extra hour and couldn't understand why we weren't all ready to leave! 

 Our morning was to be a tour of Hanoi, especially the Old Town and the French Quarter. A lot of the old colonial buildings are still intact despite the ravages of the Vietnam War. But first, we had a walk to see the tomb of Ho Chi Minh. His body is on display in a mausoleum, only, according to Nam, it's not his body! Nevertheless it is guarded by goose-stepping soldiers in sparkling white uniforms and visited by hoards of people daily between 9 and 11 am. We didn't bother queuing up to see him as you have to be there with the sparrow's fart and we didn't get up early enough. 

 The next stop was a temple. I can't pronounce the names of these places but am willing to let you try  'Văn Miếu - Quốc Tử Giám' !!    It was a very peaceful place, until hoards of school children arrived. The temple is dedicated to Confucius and the schoolchildren had gone to pray for good grades in their upcoming exams. Worth a go, I suppose! 

After the temple we went to Quán Sứ Temple, this one was a Buddhist pagoda. There were five shrines and people had provided offerings in the form of fruit and vegetables. These did not go to waste though as they are readily available for homeless people at the end of the day. If you're homeless and want to eat fruit and veg, you pop along to your local pagoda, if you fancy a bit of meat, then the temples are the place to go. You do not see people begging on the streets here as they are looked after by the religious groups around the city. 

Our final visit of the morning was to an old prison that the French built to house political prisoners and undesirables. The conditions were horrendous, the prisoners being shackled in a seated position by their ankles being secured under a bar. The women prisoners had what looked like part of a ladder fixed around their necks. The French, being the French, also installed two guillotines to execute the prisoners on Death Row. The prison was later used to house US airmen who were shot down over North Vietnam in the war. Although their treatment and living conditions were much better than those who went before them. 

 Yay! It's lunchtime ...... So lunch was to be taken street food style. Hmmm, not very keen, as I have only just got over the Tom t*** very recently.

 But first we had to get to our chosen Gordon Ramsey special by walking through the local market. There was every kind of fruit and vegetable for sale, all of it so fresh and perfect, the likes of which you would never see in Tesco. Also there were live chickens, ducks, pigeons, eels and frogs, this being perhaps the French influence?. The fish were still swimming in shallow bowls, one large one had been cut in half and it was still alive, absolutely heart breaking for me, I felt so ashamed at that point to be part of a human race who could inflict such pain on a poor unfortunate creature. Yes, I do eat the flesh of animals but I am always hopeful that they are shown more compassion than that during their dispatching. 

We arrived at out gourmet restaurant, sitting down on very low plastic chairs, a bit like Ayla had when she was 2 years old. The choice was Chicken Pho or a sort of sweet and sour pork with noodles. Both dishes were in a very watery stock and you added rice noodles to the bowl as you went along. I had the pork which was pretty awful, dutifully washed down with a draught Hanoi beer... At this point I was starting to dread meal times.... Especially when Nam brought out the much sought after cooked duck foetus. Holy Crap, this just gets worse!

 I became very confused between this watery broth stuff and the street cafe's washing up water, which was which?

The final place we visited was right next to the market. Nam told us that it was one of the most expensive places to buy a flat, based on its location. Well, I tell you, wild horses wouldn't drag me in there to live. There are up to six families per floor, each with just a single bedroom and living room, which are small. There is one bathroom and one kitchen per floor, so each family has a slot time when they can use these facilities. The wiring? Words fail me!!

On the way back to the hotel we were told that we could pay $23 and go out on a special treat tonight to try even more street food. You can imagine how thrilled I was to hear that! Everyone else seemed to be really keen, so I kind of felt that I had to string along. I found myself looking out for a pharmacy so I could replenish my stock of Imodium! 

So 4.30 came along and there we are, trotting off to Salmonella City. We picked up an Australian family along the way as the tour was run by a different guide called Ching, or something like that. He was a really nice guy with a good sense of humour. Our first delicacy was actually very nice, a teeny baguette filled with a type of pate. 

 Then we stopped off at a place that made very thin pancakes from rice milk and flour. These were filled very sparsely with what looked a bit like Ollie's dinner, but less appetising. Hell! 

The next place was for a barbecue, but not really as we know it. Surprise, surprise! We were given a dish covered with foil containing three large lumps of animal fat, probably pork, and a few pieces of sliced onion, which we started to heat up. Along came our first taster, beef slices wrapped around very tiny Death Cap fungus, well that's what it looked like. Luckily Martin and Rhonda had first dibs which is when we discovered that it was the same texture as a bicycle seat and impossible to chew or swallow. Celia and I passed on that one. 

Up to now I had managed to eat my ' meals' with a fork or a spoon, however there were only chopsticks available. Along came some pork kebabs which were good and some sweet corn on the cob, bok choy and some bread, oh yes, and the frogs, the whole frogs and not just the legs. Pass again!! I did manage the chopsticks quite well though. So, was I having fun yet? What do you think!

We finished off at another street caff having fresh fruit but it was soaked in watered down condensed milk, which was really sweet.

On to coffee at a secret café ! We branched off through a tablecloth shop and out the back door into a narrow alley. At the end was an even narrower coffee shop with the fattest ginger cat you ever saw. Apparently Celia's cat Dave was his spitting image.

I decided on green tea as coffee would keep me awake. Oh good choice! The coffee ended up looking like cappucino with loads of froth. The froth was actually made up of condensed milk and a separated and beaten egg folded in. Sounds like something Baldrick would have produced. 

 

 So we were given a taxi ride home to the hotel and now I have packed up my belongings into my new giraffe-look bag with a few bits in a separate bag for tomorrow night and the next day. We are off to Halong Bay to spend the night on a junk in the Bay. The highlight will be the meal of Elephant Ear fish, or not in my case as I don't eat our little finny friends. I'm hoping for some non-street food, maybe some chicken or something, only time will tell. 

 Good Night all.