Today we flew out of Hue to Hanoi. Hue's airport was tiny with only one other flight other than our flight leaving while we were there. It was a long shed with two gates and half a dozen shops selling overpriced tourist crap. The flight was fine except for two events, one that the flight left early (never had that happen before!) and the other as we descended to land at Hanoi our plane hit some turbulence and dropped a few metres straight down before flying on normally. The Vietnamese guy next to us gripped the armrests on his seat and screamed out in English "Oh my god!" before we started cacking ourselves laughing. He started to laugh too but never did let go of the armrests until we landed. He also had what must have been a steam-powered mobile phone as when the announcement came over to turn off all electronic devices for take-off he left his on and duly turned it back on before we landed.

Our bags were last out onto the carousel at the airport so we had to wait a while then found our driver to take us to the hotel. As we crossed the street outside the terminal we quickly discovered that taxis don’t have to give way at crossings as we were almost run over. While we were waiting for the car to come and pick us up we noticed a guy with a mole on his face and hair coming out of it that was about 30cm long. Nice work turning a fault into a feature I guess.

Drive to the hotel took a bit over an hour. Hotel was nice and close the old quarter so lots of narrow streets. Checked in and were shown to our room, a twin room on the 3rd floor overlooking the intersection at the front of the hotel. Err, no. We then got taken to a room with a queen bed, on the 4th floor…overlooking the same intersection. We asked if there were some quiet rooms at the back of the hotel and were told to follow them down to reception and they’d check. We were shown to a room on the 4th floor at the back of the hotel, perfect…except it had three single beds. This was like a lucky dip! We then went down to a room on the 3rd floor that was at the back of the hotel, dark, quiet and had a queen bed. Perfect.

We went down to reception and asked where the nearest supermarket and department store was. We were shown two places which we quickly worked out were not supermarkets but markets. We went to the nearest one to take a look but it was not much use at all. The nearest department store was apparently 15 minutes away by taxi. Returned to the hotel and had a coffee before going back to our room to look up some restaurants for dinner. Decided to eat at a place near the hotel which was not the cheapest but had some good reviews. Found the restaurant despite the map from the hotel and the one in our guide book differing. We thought it’d be busy but it was dead quiet. Ate dinner and then went back to the hotel to pack for our trip to Halong Bay the next morning.