Ok more serious blog entry now...The journey from Vientiane to Hanoi really did take 26 hours and it was not the most comfortable. Arriving at the Vietnam border at 1.30 am for it not to open till 7 am at least allowed us to sleep for a few hours without the rocking of the bus and tooting of the horns jolting us awake. As I said, immigration is very thorough here, even your bags get x-rayed when coming into the country. I will admit I spent a couple of days wondering if I had the right visa as my guide book seemed to be telling me otherwise but I made it through ok. It would seem my guide book was wrong yet again and is proving more useful as a paper weight than a guide book. The other time was searching for a hostel in Vientiane which had burnt down...guess that one might not be the guide books fault...I guess...

Made it into Hanoi and got into a mini van who promised to take us to where we wanted to go to but we ended up going to some random hotel miles from where we actually wanted to go to. I told the lads we should have paid him on arrival and not before as we could have withheld payment till we got to the right place. Never mind. We made it to the correct hostel and it is the best one by far that I have stayed in on this trip.

After spending a good night in town with the lads taking in some dinner (not cheap but I can't eat stall food all the time) I woke to a raging fever and a temperature of 104. Which pretty much ruined my first full day in Hanoi as I spent it in bed unable to move. As if I hadn't gotten enough sleep on the 26 hour journey from Vientiane to Hanoi, I managed to sleep most of the day and into the night (on and off), perhaps due to no energy I had no choice.

I was feeling pretty low yesterday but I did however experience genuine human kindness from 4 people in my shared dorm. The first was from a pre-med student called Felicity who came to see how I was, gave me paracetamol and even went and bought me a bottle of water whilst checking over me throughout the course of the day. I woke later on in the day and smiled for the first time as I saw they'd left me a can of coke with a note on it which said 'please drink me, from Mark and Felicity' as I needed the sugar, unable to get out of bed I hadn't eaten since dinner with the lads. There were two other people in the dorm who checked over me and I regret not getting their names but all 4 of them will be back in a couple days since they're heading off to Halong Bay on a tour so I can thank them properly then.

Today however, I woke to a slightly less temperature and made it down for breakfast and I was determined not to let whatever gripped me yesterday to get the better of me today. So I went walking off into the town, I went round the Hoan Kiem lake, which is dubbed Turtle lake as it is rumoured that massive Turtles live in the water...pfft! Of course I never saw one!

I went and visited the Ha Lo Prison which has now turned into the Hilton Towers hotel and shopping complex, however, as part of the deal they had to keep some of the prison as a museum. It was kind of horrible to see how cruel the conditions were, 2000 people at one point stuffed into a space not meant for more than 500. I also visited the Temple of Literature which was an institute built for learning and sitting exams, the exams qualified you to become a Mandarin (yes I know it sounds like the orange...but it's not lol) and I think out of 3000 people who sat them less than 20 passed. There are statues in there dating back to the 1400's. It was nice and peaceful in the back gardens, not many people go to the very back but stop at the main courtyard.

I started to feel a little unwell after that so thought I had better haul it back to the Hostel before I couldn't. I had plans to go and see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum but it was too far away for me to walk at the moment. Luckily though, when I got back one of the American lads told me it's only open between 0800 and 1130...thank god I never walked it! Decided to take in some local cuisine tonight and went to a restaurant called Pho 10 which funnily enough all it serves is Pho and it's at number 10! Pho is a noodle soup with meat in it, this case it was Beef. It was lovely! Much better than the Pho I tried in some random cafe on the way to Hanoi. After which I decided to take a trip to the Night Market, being lazy I thought I would take a cyclo. A cyclo is a bike with a car type thing on the front much like a rickshaw...anyway the guy looked old but he pedals fast! I didn't like the Night Market, it was rather tacky and full of stalls which catered randomly enough for iPhones and nothing else, not anything useful, just hundreds of stalls selling covers for iPhones? Walking back was an experience...how I never had my arms taken off by the psycho moped drivers I'll never know. It seems they coast along looking at the market whilst they're 'driving' and then just pull over whenever they feel like it! On BOTH sides of the road nevertheless!

Planning on getting a bicycle tomorrow (despite the nutters on the road) and seeing the outer city museums and sights before booking a tour to Halong Bay and another to Sapa. May even take in a cooking class here in Hanoi, although after everything else I might run out of Visa to see all the other towns on my list! We'll see!

The photo is of me at the Temple of Literature in the back gardens.