At 7.30 this morning I got into my taxi. The old quarter of Hanoi is a maze of streets and at this time a hive of activity. The pick-up was arranged by Sidney of Friends Travel; (a travel agent/coffee shop run by an "on the ball" Dutchman) and arrived exactly as requested at 7.30 am. The airport is about 35 km away of which about 18 km is built up area of the outer suburbs of Hanoi. Incredibly though, I arrived at he airport, through check-in, immigration/customs and security check all in 65 minutes.

Spare time to write a few words about the last few days. Tavan was again fantastic, hard to find a better way than with Eddie, Hi-en and the rest of his family. One day (with some difficulty) I found even time to do...absolutely nothing other than a bit of cleaning around the outside of Eddie's new house.

After dropping of the rental scooter, a taxi took me to Lao Cai for the train ride back to Hanoi where I arrived at 6 am the following morning. I hastily left the station before being swarmed by taxi drivers and headed for the beautiful Hoan Kiem Lake on the edge of the Old Quarter. My spare time was rewarded by relaxing on one of the benches taking in what the Hanoi people in the area do daily. At 6 am they head for the parks and this lake and walk around it in anti clockwise direction. In places they stop and do their exercises; tai chi, badminton and other balls sports and...Ballroom dancing.

One of the key attractions in Hanoi is to visit the water puppet theatre show; many times I walked past the place and observed the hordes of people at the entrance. Yesterday afternoon I happen to walk past the theatre around 10 minutes before the next show so I thought “why not”. The show was great and now I understand why it is so popular. Another tick of the bucket list I guess.

This just about completes of this journey unless Singapore has something really special in mind for me.

The other pictures will tell the rest of the story next to the photos