6th October

So Hanoi here we come! Up and out early after a brekkie of baguettes with jam and butter or a fried egg ( this seems to be pretty much standard for most of Vietnam and so it would seem variety is not the spice of life when it comes to breakfast!). We manage to navigate the maze of little back streets round by our hotel and head back to Hoan Kiem lake to get our bearings. Bach Ma Temple and Dong Xuan market are on the cards and after some superb map reading skills (I swear, with my epic lack of direction and inability to cross roads properly I would make a rubbish solo traveler!.....Oh and Chubb, if you are reading this -guess where Paul honed those map reading skills!).

So we find Bach Ma Temple amid all the scaffolding and rubble (health and safety is not their strong point) and find it is closed for renovation! Dong Xuan market is our next stop - not Paul's favorite of locations - literally a warehouse packed to the rafters with fake this, fake that and tacky souvenirs aplenty - ace! We don't last long in there as the hoards of Vietnamese shouting 'you buy, you have a look' drives us away, and plus we've noticed that all the streets in Hanoi are lined with shops that seem to be dedicated to a certain type of product i.e. shoe street, clothes, electrical streets etc. so there is no shortage of shopping opportunities!
We tried to cram in as much as we could and so we jumped on a cyclo and for about a quid he took us all the way over to Ha Lao Prison or the ' Hanoi Hilton' as it is nicknamed on account of the fact it is where they took all the American PoWs during the Vietnam War. Was such an interesting place but with our epic lack of knowledge about all things to do with the Vietnam War it was hard to put any of it in context!

Our next stop was one of the street food vendors - not gonna lie - most of them look god awful as in literally just a pot and stove on the corner of the street with a few kiddie plastic chairs but they are on every street you walk down so it seemed like the norm! We had some Pho, which is meat and noodles in a soup with some nettles and bean sprouts - was delicious and only 60p - can't argue with that! (and there were no dodgy stomachs after so everyone was a winner).
Then it was off to the military museum, which was big...just big! Lots of rooms with guns and bomb replicas and more guns! Interesting don't get me wrong and Paul like it but by this point with were both a bit military history'd out!! Although the helicopter and tanks out in the courtyard were pretty damm cool.

Next stop was Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum - after failing to go into Mao's Mausoleum in Beijing we were determined to go and try and see Minh's embalmed body but sod's law - it was closed during October and November while they preserved his body a bit more! Interestingly we read that he didn't actually want to be preserved he wanted to be cremated and scattered throughout Northern, Central and Southern Vietnam to symbolize how he united the country - but the government went and pumped the poor b***** full of formaldehyde instead! The building itself was impressive and we tried to find Ho Chi Minh's stilt house (where he actually lived - rather than in some palace) but because it was late afternoon that was closed (hadn't timed it right obviously!).
Shattered we tried to find a cyclo to take us back to our hotel and for the life of us do you think we could find one??! They are all over you when you don't want one, but see when you do - knowhere to be seen! In fairness it might has had something to do with the fact that it was rush hour and they tend to get in the way! So we walk it all the way back - better really as we took in a lot more of Hanoi that way and we also find lots of good dvd shops! Bought a highly illegal copy of a film that had only just come out before we left for 50p and True Blood season one for 1.50 - good times! Blatantly not going to work back in the UK but most of the hotels here are equipped with DVD's so it occupies us when we need to have a cheap night!

Booked a Ha Long Bay 'deluxe' boat trip for the two next days, then a hill tribe trek up in Sapa, Northern Vietnam, a few city tours and also a hop on hop off bus ticket to get us through Vietnam all for about 140 pounds - will keep us occupied for a while!

xx