Hanoi the city of motorbikes, dog meat and water puppets!

Before we got off the bus Steve saw a woman chopping up a few deep frozen dogs on the street. The weather was a bit chillier and cloudy than where we'd previously been but tht was a welcome change for a week at least.

We spent a few days getting our bearings which isn't that easy in Hanoi, we did find that each road has a separate trade Metal street, toy street, sunglass street etc.

After a few days we left for Halong Bay to spend a night on a junk, canoe around the limestone carsts, look a more caves, climb to the top of a mountain and stay on Cat Ba island.

Halong bay was beautiful but the weather wasn't the best. We didn't really do a lot on this excursion and 3 days was enough for us but Roger met a guy called messy, (you can see where this is going!) and he decided to stay for a while longer.

Back in Hanoi we had 6 days to kill before our flight to Bangkok so decided to take in the sights!

We saw a huge embalmed turtle on Hoan Kiem lake where locals still beleive that turtles live there. We also went to Hanoi Hilton not the hotel but the prison which was named the Hilton by the American POW's.

Please please please spare yourself the agony of the water puppet show if you ever find yourself in Hanoi, it's an hour of your life you wont ever get back, quite funny in places, not because you understand what's going on but the fact it's so childish.

Other than that the rest of the time in Hanoi was spent enjoying beer hoi, playng cards and really looking forward to getting back to Thailand.