Day 236 - We woke up feeling all refreshed in our lovely room, we enjoyed a lovely breakfast of pancakes, juice and coffee before checking out. The place was perfect but out of our price range, the staff were so lovely and gave us loads of information before we left. We checked in to somewhere round the corner, not as nice but nearly half the price. We went straight out and explored the Old Quarter. Firstly we stumbled upon a shop selling the famous Vietnamese weasel coffee. Its exactly the same concept as Kopi Luwak, the weasels pick out and eat the very best coffee beans, then they go through their digestive system and pop out the other end. After they are cleaned, dried and roasted they make delicious cups of coffee. They offered us a try and it was lovely although very strong. The old town was great, full of old buildings and a Vietnam flags over every door, they covered the city. We got some 'Bun Chao', BBQ'd pork in a sauce with noodles and salad leaves, it was delicious. We went to Ngoc Son temple which is on Hoan Kiem lake, it was beautiful, lovely gardens and very Chinese, it even had the embalmed remains of a giant tortoise. We had a big walk around the lake and slid down one of the side streets, we came across an ice-cream shop packed with locals going mad called Kem Trang Tien. Obviously we couldn't miss out, and was well worth it, lovely creamy coconut ice-cream. At the bottom of the road was a massive fancy shopping centre 'Trang Tien Plaza' we went in for a sneaky peak. It was covered in gold and 5 floors high. We did a bit of window shopping but were not dressed to enter the shops. We kept walking and found 'St. Joseph's church' it was magnificent, we wanted to go in but we couldn't find a way in anywhere. We stopped for some sugar cane juice on a street corner and did some people watching. That evening we went to a beer station on the corner which sold draught beer for 30p a glass. We chose some noodles and fried potatoes with garlic and butter, which turned out to be chips. We managed to make it back just before the thunder storms started.

Day 237 - Up bright and early we got breakfast and headed to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. We started to walk across a big square in toward the mausoleum and as we tried to walk up to the building whistles went off and army men pointed us in the opposite direction. After much more pointing and whistle blowing we made it to the back of the building. After going through a number of security checks we were in and had to walk single file into the building and then around his heavily guarded sarcophagus - weird. Once out we decided to go get a bit lost, after walking down a few tiny little alleys we could already see the traditional life style we were looking for, everyone's houses open up and you can see straight in to their front rooms. We found our way back and walked to the market, it turned out to be a bit of a tourist nightmare but we left with some chopsticks. We had dressed 'appropriately' for the mausoleum but it was too hot so we headed back to the hotel to change. We found a street eat and got some beef noodle soup and bought some cakes from the bakery. We spotted a lovely upstairs cafe with a balcony so found the entrance at the back of a clothes shop and ordered some iced-coffe's on the balcony, people watching on the street below. Today the thunder storms started early and after holding out as long as we could we had to leave. Fortunately it wasn't too heavy but we ran to the train station and booked our night train to Sapa for the next day. We headed back to the hotel for an early night.

Day 238 - After breakfast we checked out and walked to Hao Lo prison. Only a small section of the prison remained but it was really interesting It was originally built by the French to hold Vietnamese political prisoners and then by the Vietnamese for the gunned down American pilots. The museum was great, we learnt a lot and spent most of the morning there. We had Bun Chao for lunch at a street cafe and walked to Lenin park. When we got there they were charging to get in so we decided our money would be better spent on a coffee (think we are a little obsessed with the strong Vietnamese coffee). We found another roof top cafe and sat for a while. It was quite a long walk back to the old quarter but once there we had a final look around, Lloyd got himself a propaganda poster and then we headed back to the hotel. We wrote up some blog then out of nowhere the heavens opened . We ran back and grabbed our bags, no taxi's would stop for us and the rain was the heaviest we had ever seen it. The hotel had to ring us a taxi and we made it to the train station on time and got in to our tiny beds ready for our journey to Sapa.