Sooooo, after travelling through China we realised that a blog may be the way to go to make sure we are keeping all and sundry up to date on our world adventures! Unfortunately, we can't be bothered to try and blog about everything we did in China - it would literally take us ages and so we shall just start from Vietnam!

So we left Hong Kong on the 4th October and touched down in Bangkok airport knowing that we had an epic 11 hour wait ahead of us until we could board our flight to Hanoi. Surprisingly the time flew by, once we'd found Paul a chicken curry, I'd raided Boots (apparently they have them throughout Thailand - hell to the yeah!) and we tried to catch some zzz's it was time to go.

Flight was about two hours and we slept for most of that! Managed to get through immigration ok and our bags were there waiting for us so we headed out to catch a taxi. We had managed to barter with some guy who approached us and who was willing to take us to our hotel for 10$ - lulled into a false sense of security somewhat because as it happens the little f*&%$s scammed us good and proper! We passed through what they were trying to tell us was a toll bridge and because we didnt have any vietnamese dong they paid for us and said they would take us to a cash point! However, alarm bells started ringing when they quoted the price in dollars, which we had, then asked us for 1.2million dong! So Paul gets out of taxi, I stay in there in case they decide to do a runner with our luggage, apparently the other guy tried typing in the amount into the ATM for him but Paul in a roundabout way told him where to go! So we get back in the taxi and they ask for the money but by this time we are starting to do our calculations and realise this is all a bit steep - so we start arguing and the guy gets a bit flustered and we realise that the doors are locked from the inside...!!! Nothing we could do by this point, we give up as god knows where they could have taken us and thankfully we arrive safely at our hotel! Any major crisis averted but we do end up 45 pounds down for a journey that should have costed us no more than a tenner!!! BAD TIMES!

Still our hotel is well nice, we are beginning to realise that there will be none of this 'hosteling' malarcky for us, plush hotels all the way - they are so cheap out here! We just crashed for a few hours before heading out to explore some more of the old quarter.

You can really pick up on the Parisian influence in the architecture of the Old Quarter - there are so many nice little cafes and resturants. We wandered into a place called Cafe Mocha and had a very authentic spagetti bolognaise and ham and cheese baguette for tea (you'll notice that the Spagetti bolognaise becomes a bit of a reoccuring theme as Paul cannot resist the stuff!).

We'd heard that the water puppet show was a must see event so we headed to book tickets and then found another nice bar overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake and we get the beers in!!! It was so nice just sitting up there and watching all the night time traffic whizz by - we found out that Hanoi has a population of about 4 million but that there are about 10million motorcycles on the roads - CRAZY! We have quickly established that I cannot cross roads and Paul has to drag me through all the swerving bikes - you really do just have to walk and not worry about the traffic - they will just go around you!

Anywhoo - the water puppet show was really good - the accompanying music was a bit dodge though - all that wailing and stuff but the dragon dances and firecrackers made up for that! After such a long day we just head on back to the hotel and crash - you'd think travelling would be realxing but I swear you do like 15 hour days just non-stop - still we're not complaining :oP

xxx