Well Lao airlines turned out to be fine, the flight was only an hour long and I didn't even cry on take off (which I usually do for every other flight we've done!) Landing in Hanoi was a bit of a shock after laid back Laos...there were motorbikes everywhere. We found somewhere to stay, we had prebooked somewhere on the net but they had mucked up the booking so they transferred us to another place that turned out to be more central to all the sights! All good! We were staying in the old quarter of Hanoi, the streets were very narrow and hectic, they had tall narrow buildings with wooden window shutters either side and trees. Motorbikes would whizz past in any direction so we had to be really careful not to get run over!!! Despite being completely chaotic, it did seem really nice walking through and watching everyone go about their daily business. We took a cyclo through Hanoi on one day to take us to Ho Chi Minhs Mauseleum, which turned out to be shut but we did see a one legged pagoda and went into a museum which I found a little bit odd, it was all about Ho Chi Minh or great uncle Ho as he was lovingly referred to in the museum and loads of wierd sculptures and paintings like giant pineapples!? Kam liked it though......

We walked around for a while and the streets were really wide and treelined it reminded us of Paris so we stopped in a cafe! We went into a war museum and then walked down to the lake which I've forgotton the name of. It started to tip it down so we didn't really appreciate it fully although it looked pretty.

We decided to book a trip up to Halong Bay for two days, so we left early and got a bus up there which took about 4 hours. When we got to the harbour it was manic! tourists and boats everywhere! we had to hop over a few boats to get onto ours. The boat was really nice and it only had 8 rooms on it which meant not to many people! We had a really nice lunch before we set sail. Halong Bay is amazing, there are loads of tree covered limestone peaks jutting out the sea. We stoppped for a while at a floating village, they even had a floating school! We all got on a little boat and went through a cave into a lagoon which was surrounded by towering peaks. We then went on to some caves, had to climb up quite a few stairs to get in but the cave was massive and there were different coloured lights illuminating the inside, it looked really good. We then got back on the boat and sailed a bit further before the boat stopped in the middle of the bay and moored. The sea was so so calm and gorgeous, me and Kam decided to go Kayacking, the Kayacks were put in the water and I though I would get in first, there was a really steep ladder down the side of the boat so I carefully climbed down and placed one leg on the Kayack and one on the ladder, the kayack started to float away and I started to do the splits, needless to say I fell in and everyone clapped! Kam got in fine and we went on a little kayack adventure we found another little lagoon through a cave, we splashed around for a while before heading back to the boat for some dinner. We spent the evening on the top deck having a few beers and staring at the stars, the other people on the boat were really nice so we were all chatting and drinking, was a good night. We didnt really sleep though we had a sailor cockroach in our room which made us feel a little bit uneasy and it was so unbelievably hot and uncomfortable! The next day we had a big breakfast and sailed back to Halong. So that was our Hanoi and Halong Bay adventure.............