after a turbulant air asia cheapo deluxe flight we arrive in Hanoi and got picked up for free from the airport from the hostel we were staying at which we thought was great as usually costs 10 us dollars(everywhere here you can either pay in us dollars or dong the local currency) so we arrive at the hostel and think its all great we book the open bus ticket and the trip to halong bay and the room is nice and big although a bit noisy, the weather is grey and raining tho not great so start having second thoughts on the halong bay trip so we ask if we can cancel and they say no we ask why its more expensive than the other tours we have now seen along the road and they tell us quality is more important blah blah so we think ok then lets go, weather was awful so ruined the day a bit we sailed out to halong bay and didnt see any of the rocks til they were practically next to us felt a bit like king kong when all the rocks appear out of the mist and then we had lunch which i didnt like any of then the boat dropped us off at 2 caves(we thought we were kayaking to the caves) caves were ok not great and took us 7 hours on a mini bus to get there and back so all in all not great, we also got told when we booked the open bus ticket that the bus had a loo, all that know me know that i go to the loo about 20 million times a day so i need a loo!!!! he says yes and charges us 30 dollars we then find out that everywhere else is 20 dollars and no open buses have toilets so off we go charging back ready to face him he is not there and havnt actually seen him since the greedy buggar took all our money in the first place so have an argument with one of his sons and ask for a refund as there is no toilet and too expensive after a nights worth of arguing they say we can have a bus ticket for 20 dollars so we say ok, next day we ask for the ticket they say we cant have it til we get on the bus argument number 3 errupts! we wanted the ticket and 3 different members of staff all say they have bought the ticket so we say if you have bought it where is it can we have it then one of the slips up and says we buy the ticket on the bus so after another nights worth of arguing we get all our money back for the stupid bus ticket and then have to go and find another company within half hour to book another cheap bus ticket with a toilet as they are all closing was nightmare on elm street! anyway good ending we have found a bus with a toilet(hopefully) and tonight at 6pm we are facing a lovely 17 hour bus ride down vietnam to a place called Hoi An where we will stay for a few nights and keep working our way down to Saigon or Ho Chi Minh Citry same place but people call it both names! so hanoi is very very french most menues are in french and lots of baguettes and french cheese etc food is nice but its 33,000 dong to the pound so working out things is quite hard and everything feels so expensive when they ask for 8000 dong for a can of coke but i spose you get used to it have learnt that all the people want to rip you off badly but we have learnt a lesson and wont let them do it again!!! wish me luck for the bus journey am dreading it....have my sleeping pills should be ok xxx

all that ranting forgot to say we also went to the famous prison here that the french ran when they ran the country and saw whwre all the pow were kept and saw John McCain(who is now running for us president) flying suit he got captured in and was sent to this prison as they also kept american pilots whose planes were shot down etc, most of the place has been destroyed for new buildings but we saw some of it and was very interesting and i made the bus ride!!!! whoo!!