Travel to Hanoi and exploring the old quarter.

Wow, if we thought Hi Chi Minh was crazy Hanoi is even more ridiculous!! There's probably less motorbikes but no pavement and no traffic lights at all (the pavements are full of stuff they're selling, people eating and parked motorbikes) it's absolute chaos and it's such a thrill to be wandering the streets!

We arrived about lunch time and I was extremely proud of Edd who had done his research & found us the local bus rather than the expensive tourist shuttle from the airport. Our bus ticket cost us 30p (compared to a £20 taxi) each for an hours ride into town through small villages and rice fields. We arrived in central Hanoi in the pouring rain and got to test our newly bought waterproofs.

View from our hotel room

The city is very different from Ho Chi Minh, firstly more humid, we're both drenched in sweat from our exploring. Hanoi is more green with trees growing up on every street, it makes for beautiful shots of chaotic streets, a mixture of trees, electric cables and bikes.


We ate lunch on the street from a stall and it cost us £1.50 for two Vietnamese sandwiches and a drink!! Since then we have just been wandering and taking photos, we found some lovely oil paintings in a gallery that we both liked and then turned the corner to find 5 other galleries all selling the same stuff!! We're both exhausted so we'll have a cuppa tea and biscuit (so English!) back at the aircon hotel before heading out for dinner.

We are both shattered, we attempted to go for dinner, we walked through dark, busy and hot streets to get to a restaurant that's recommended on trip advisor. We got to the restaurant to be told it was fully booked, we have booked for Tuesday and then we gave up and came home. Neither of us were that hungry and the heat and chaos was too much to deal with. We are both curled up at home, books and crisps to hand and ready for an early night for our early Halong bay start tomorrow.

We passed lots of people making fires today on the side of the road, they seemed to be burning money!! We've just worked out that they believe in burning fake, cardboard, money, iPhones, shoes, anything one might need in the afterlife for their relatives. They sell packs of cardboard 'essentials' and even houses and cars that you can buy to burn!.