A happy hello from Hanoi! After a bumpy first day including a delayed flight and our hostel overbooking, meaning we had to stay in a dodgy prison-like twin room in a hotel round the corner for our first night, we are now thoroughly enjoying Hanoi. When we stepped off the plane, we were shocked by the weather - the drop in temperature to around 20 degrees feels huge and we've had to wrap up!

We're staying in the Old Quarter of the city, which has a great feel to it and is no way as busy as Saigon. In the centre is a beautiful lake that we walked around yesterday and explored the streets nearby. Most of the streets are dedicated to selling a certain type of item - so far, a few that we have seen include: sunglasses street, baby street, silk street, tin street, sweet street and we are staying on bamboo ladder street.

The place we're staying at is called Hanoi Family Homestay and it's run by a lady called Perfume and her family. It has four rooms, one on each floor, and we have breakfast and dinner included for $15 a night. Dinner is wonderful; home cooked Vietnamese dishes that we all sit round a small table and tuck into with our chopsticks and tiny bowls. We've met a lot of great people here and Perfume treats us like family (for example, we needed an ATM so they took us on a motorbike to a safe bank for free).

Today, Maria, a family friend of Perfume's, took us with Arttu, a friend from Finland, to the Museum of Ethnology. We learnt that there are over 50 types of ethnic minorities of Vietnamese people and got an insight into tribe life. The most common is Viet. We also watched a Vietnamese water puppet show which was a bit strange, but the kids loved it! We're still getting used to feeling famous - Chinese people keep asking to have photos with us.

This evening we did a walking street food tour of Hanoi. It was fantastic, we never would have found the places that we went hidden inside the nooks and crannies of the city. Our tour guide, Lotus, eats at many of the places with her family. There were 7 others on the tour: three Americans, an Australian couple and an Irish couple that now live in Perth. Every time we needed to cross a road (which we're now pro at by the way), Lotus would shout 'STIIIICKKKKYYYY RIIIICCEEE' so that we all stayed together.

So far in Hanoi, here is some of the food and drinks we have tried (both on our own and on the tour, but not including our home cooked meals):

1. Bàhn Bao - a tasty white rice dumpling filled with bbq pork, some sort of bean and two tiny whole hard boiled eggs (10,000 dong = 50 cent and rather tasty);

2. Banana bun - a soft roll with crunchy banana coating on the outside and filled with banana custard through the middle;

3. Square cake - a traditional Vietnamese 'cake' to eat only around New Years. It's sticky rice with meat in the middle (we weren't big fans but apparently it's nicer fried);

4. Sweet and sour donuts - crunchy round balls, some of which are sweet with banana type bits in the middle and some that somehow taste like meat (not what we expected but they filled a hole);

5. Bún Chà - a lunch dish that consists of a plate of white rice noodles and a plate of herbs which you mix into a hot bowl of fish sauce with beef (incredibly yummy but remember, fish sauce and pepper are best friends);

6. Bành my patê, trúng ân kèm - a breakfast sandwich that has patê, egg, pork, spring roll, vnese sausage, Chinese sausage, beef and chicken in (surprisingly nice - we'd definitely have it again. The bread is so yummy compared to Bangkok and Cambodia as it was brought over by the French);

7. Bánh Cuôn Nóng - another breakfast dish of different types of small rice pancakes such as shrimp, mushroom and pork that you dip in fish sauce (we like - quite sweet);

8. Home made Vietnamese lemon ice tea (incredibly yummy but probably filled with heaps of sugar). When sitting on their tiny stools having a drink, the Vietnamese eat sunflower seeds, the shells of which they just throw on the floor;

9. Bò Bía - a 'coconut cake', i.e. a rice pancake filled inside with shredded coconut and some other ingredients (delicious!!!);

10. A selection of sweet and sour meat dumplings, each of which you dip in different sauces, for example you dip the sweet ones in chilli sauce (easy to eat lots of);

11. Phó Bo and Phó Ga - of course, the all famous dish originating in Hanoi that is tasty soup filled with white noodles, herbs and beef (Bo) or chicken (Ga). Phó is nicer in Hanoi than Saigon as it warms you up!

12. Egg coffee or egg chocolate, hot or cold (we opted for egg chocolate, hot). We've tried this in two different places and it was the yummiest thing on earth in the original Hanoi cafe, Cafè Giãng (since 1946). It is chocolate milk with a layer of frothy egg on top in a small mug. The mug is placed inside a bowl of boiling water to heat up the chocolate milk. Mixed together, it's heaven on earth (enjoyed with more sunflower seeds);

13. Lotus' favourite desert called 'Chop Chop' - not on the menu! A sensational mix of coconut milk, ice, cream, jackfruit, jelly made with rice and dried grape, dried chestnuts coated in rice and a few other bits. You chop all of it together to mix it up and it tastes like a wonderful coconut yogurt with different sweet things in - the mixture of textures is fantastic;

14. Last but not least, the all important Bia Hoi, or rice beer (5,000 dong = 15p per glass). A pretty tasty lager, 3%, brewed daily and served from barrels as it goes off very quickly.

With full bellies, we're off to bed.

Steph and Max x