Before we knew it it was time to land and we arrived safely into Hanoi airport. After smoothly passing through visa control and collecting our lives... sorry I mean rucksacks... we kindly had a car come collect us courtesy of our hostel. Approaching the centre it was clear that this city is extremely built up, with a lot of hotels and lit up billboards on each side of the road advertising Canon, Samsung, Nikon, you name it!

The short car journey from the airport to our hostel was pretty amusing, as our driver (who could not speak any English) ended up pointing out about 30 karaoke bars to us, after hearing me say to Billy about the first one that came into view, and being one of the only English words he knew!! We then decided to all BEEP BEEP at any motorbike that got in the car's way! A funny 5 minutes for us. Our heads hit the pillows almost straight away, and were then strangely woken up at 7am by someone repeatedly talking on a very loud speakerphone (much to our dislike).

Emma and Stef were still in the city for one more day so we arranged to go for lunch with them... and while waiting for them we ended up sitting on the kerb of a crossroad watching in disbelief as motorbike after motorbike came whizzing past in all directions, not stopping for people to cross the road!!! We took a walk through the Old Quarter maze of 40 streets to get to Hoan Kiem Lake, which is the centerpiece of Hanoi and very pretty if you didn't take any notice of the water which was like pea green soup! This still inhabits a 200kg tortoise which, if you're lucky, you can still get a glimpse of from the Ngoc Son temple in the middle (accessible by bridge).

Unfortunately we got lost on our way back.... cue stressy Billy!! We then went on to eat a dog burger that night by accident, safe to say we both felt rather sick after eating what we thought was beef.. It was pretty random on our second night as all of a sudden the whole city's electricity went out, leaving everything pitch black - but not to worry as we were told this happens on a regular basis and power was due to be back in about 30 minutes!! The next day I wanted to go and see some of the city's history so we took a walk to Hoa Lo Prison museum. This is the original location of what was the prison, and is all that remains of what used to be called 'Hanoi Hilton' by the American prisoners. The museum itself is full of artifacts and brutal forms of torture used for the prisoners during this time, and focuses upon the struggle that the Vietnamese faced against France in order to become independent. It was pretty interesting to learn about but set out completely different to museums back home which I found slightly weird.

We'd booked a 2 day 1 night boat trip around Halong Bay for the next day so with that in mind we treated ourselves to a yummy meal the night before (including an amazing apple & cinnamon crumble which gives all yours a run for their money... even yours Kerry haha!). We then went to watch a water puppetry show at the local theatre which was situated by the lake. Water puppetry is very big in Vietnam as it was established here, and it was an experience to see first hand! It's very cleverly done, with puppets on strings moving around the (water) stage, and a group of musicians to the left hand side providing accompaniments. All of it was spoken and sung in Vietnamese, but it was easy to grasp the storyline and was based loosely on the Chinese New Year. It was really interesting to watch and it did make us laugh quite a few times but the puppets themselves were actually reaaaaally creepy!! With that, we got ourselves an early night for our exciting trip the next day.