Hoorah! We are finally out of Beijing and have moved onto Hanoi in Vietnam. The first notable difference is the change in temperature...its back to flip flops and t-shirts after having been cocooned in many layers for the past 6 weeks. It seems that horn tooting motorcycles rule the road here and few people have cars but there is definitely a knack to crossing the road - you just have to step out and start walking slowly to allow the bikes to swerve around you - running across the road is a big no no and you are very likely to be hit this way! So, Hanoi has a good feel about it and the french influences are abundant - from the buildings to the men in berets to the courting couples by the lake. We stayed near to Hoan Kiem Lake in the Old Quarter and had our first experience of staying in a 10 person dormitory. This was on the whole a good experience but the 2 Brit guys snoring was interesting! We spent the morning wandering around the lake and through the narrow streets taking in the sights, including a Vietnamese man casually strolling down the road smoking a cigarette....completely nude! Once we had recovered from this we hired a cyclo (a buggy seat with a man pedalling on a bike from behind) and headed for the Temple of Literature, one of the earliest universities and dedicated to Confucius. It was very peaceful inside and really well maintained and there were some students showing off their artistic skills doing calligraphy for the gathering hordes. You can get some great spring rolls here from the street vendors - they are one of the local specialities but no good for the heart as they are dripping in grease.....but they taste yummy! We also indulged in a fair few glasses of Bia Hoi which is a very cheap glass of beer that you get from street sellers - provides horrible hangovers though! Hanoi seems to have an abundance of museums although we only felt the need to visit a couple of these. The War Museum was quite predictably very one sided as it traced Vietnams struggle during various conflicts e.g. "heroic Viet Cong fighters" versus "American soldiers using instruments of torture". It had loads of tanks on display as well as a monument made up of American fighter planes that had been shot down - quite a strange place all in all. We left the comfort of the hostel to head for the 12hr bus ride that would take us to Hue. We had to journey on scooters with our backpacks to get to the bus and I somehow managed to re-twist my knee getting onto the bike. After several minutes of wondering whether to head to the hospital we opted to sit it out on the bus....an interesting journey to say the least. It was overbooked so there were a load of people sitting or lying in the aisles, the luggage compartment flew open whilst on the highway and they kicked off a load of foreigners as there wasn't a connecting bus to Laos that night! We did however get to Hue eventually in one piece!!!