We arrived here via another pretty grotty and uncomfortable night bus from Hue. Fortunately it is the last of our open bus tour journies as we should have relative comfort i.e the train for other journies we plan to make in the north to Sapa. Hanoi is smaller (4m people approx) than Saigon despite being the capital and has a different feel to the southern city. It's architecture is older and it's streets narrower, giving it a more interesting feel. Just like Saigon however, the motorbikes are ubiquitous and you are in mortal danger every time you cross the road. We also noticed that some of the people here and as you move further north through the country in general can be downright rude and hotels and tour companies simply don't produce what it says on the tin. Our hotel when we first arrived here had over-booked and sent us too their sister hotel instead where the staff were in general pretty hopeless and tried to scam us on our bill. After we returned from Halong bay we stayed at a different hotel who also tried to scam us on our bill. Get the picture about Hanoi? It certainly didn't end there. We went on a two day trip to Halong Bay, arguably the visual highlight of the country. It has some 2,000 islands and is a truly stunning sight from a boat with sheer faced rocks coming straight out of the water everywhere. We absolutely loved the bay itself and it fully lived up to expectations. However, the travel company who we booked our tour through did their best to ruin it for us and indeed many others on the boat who had booked with different agencies. The organisation was chaotic and we spent a large amount of time doing nothing, waiting for buses to arrive or boats to depart. Some of the people on the boat simply didn't get what they'd paid for and we certainly didn't get as much time on the boat as promised. The explosion of tourism here has meant an explosion of hotels and tour operators, all out to make as fast a buck as possible. Some of the travel agents literally copy the names of older established agencies and trade as them and you don't know if you're booking with an established company or a 'copy'. Add this legal loophole to a tourism boom and a national trait for not being terribly truthful (this is one of the most corrupt nations on earth) and you have a recipe for trouble. It's a shame as this is a lovely country but it's getting an increasingly bad reputation amongst travellers for for rip offs and money grabbing and very soon they will kill the goose that laid the golden egg as people will simply stop coming. Our visit to Hanoi coincided with the start of the World Cup but fortunately the Vietnamese love football so watching it wasn't a problem. Stuart caught the opening Germany game in a cafe almost entirely populated by locals which meant Vietnamese commentary but entertainment in the form of the excited locals. Englands rather so so performance against Paraguay was watched at an English style pub where fortunately there was English commentary and some fellow English travellers to enjoy the game with and have a little moan about the performance afterwards! We left on a night train to Sapa in the north on the 13th, getting a ride to the station in a taxi who scammed us on the fare, the 2nd time it's happened here. To be pretty honest, we were pretty happy to leave here as the dishonesty and lies are just everywhere and every traveller we spoke to had a different, unflattering story to tell about the people here.