Ive got a bit behind on the blogs so i cant actually remember what we did the first day in Hanoi, so i'll be brief.

Our hotel was nice, well it was pretty similar to halls at uni but it had carpet which is so nice after ages with tiled floors.

We spent the day looking around the city, it was nice to be able to walk around as it was dry and sunny. This city is much more laid back than ho chi minh, lots of little shopping streets around a lake. Usual motorbikes but not as bad as HCM as the streets are narrower so easy to cross, however you do have to walk on the road the entire time as the pavements are full of motorbikes.

We (I) did a bit of shopping, they have more silk shops here selling gorgeous scarves, it's very hard to stop myself buying loads, my bag is already bulging.

We tried a few different foods as we were walking around, some thing we thought was a pizza turned out to have chocolate inside and various dried fruits. We also got attacked by a couple of women selling pineapple who before we knew it had put their pineapple baskets over our shoulders and put their hats on us to take a picture, they then tried to charge us 100vnd ($5) each for the privilege, which resulted in a bit of an argument.

We had an amazing curry selection for dinner and then headed back to the hotel for an early night as we had to get up early for our trip to Halong Bay.