We had a weird breakfast this morning in the hotel, Asia eats things for breakfast that I just don't get.....spicey noodles, rice, fish porridge etc etc! But at least we got a cup of tea (no milk). After breakfast we headed to the city zoo. At just £1.50 to get in, it's a bit of a bargain. The zoo had lots of the big attractions, elephants, Tigers, lions, bears, crocodiles etc, with a mixture of appropriate and non appropriate cages (I use cages intentionally really than enclosures). Asia doesn't seem to have caught on to the animal welfare thing. By midday it was insanely hot and we decided to head back to the hotel via the train station to book our next ticket. This sounds like it should be relatively simple, but why make things simple when they can be prolonged and difficult?! We quickly figured out that you can't just queue at the train station you need to collect a ticket....and wait....and wait. ....in order to buy your ticket! About an hour later our number came up on the screen, was not even long enough for us to stand before it had moved on to the next number, we pushed ourselves forwards anyway and eventually got seen and bought our next ticket. For dinner we headed out to a traditional little Vietnamese restaurant and both had some meat noodle dish, pretty yummy! After dinner we found ourselves in the more touristy area of the city, almost like a mini Ibiza.

On the Saturday after another dodgy breakfast we treated ourselves to a really chilled out day of reading, relaxing and a bit of shopping. In the evening we went and met the girls (plus gay Ben), Ella, Jodie, frankie and Ben. We all headed out for the night. We found this lovely little roof top bar where we had some beers, and headed on to a Mexican/ Vietnamese place for dinner and cocktails! After dinner Frankie saw a guy she went travelling with years ago so we all sat together (with his colleagues, from all over the world come to teach English in Vietnam) on mopeds and stools at the side of the road and drank yet more beer. There was children (approx 8-12) doing fire tricks, which scared the life out of me. A while later we said goodbye to our friends this time for a little longer as they head home and we carry on with our journey.