We were rudely awakened by this dreadful Vietnamese guitar music on the train this morning. It was ages before we realised there was a switch to turn it off, and longer before we saw that it was 4am not 5am, so thought we had another hour in bed. So we went back to bed, as in, we lay down rather than sat up, and then promptly arrived. So had a mad scramble again to shove things into bags and get off the train. There were a few cabs waiting around the station, al...

The night bus arrived at about 8am and we headed over towards the hostel area. We had previously made a booking by email in a place called Hanoi Backpackers' Hostel, which was in a great location, but was dorm rooms and full of 18 year old gap yearers - which was a scene none of us was really in the zone for. But it was a good place to have a base none the less. After sticking our bags in storage there and grabbing some breakfast, we internet-ed and pottered abo...