Hanoi

So, we are in Hanoi *(not really, to be honest we are in Cambdoia and about a month late and really rubbish at blogging- but we are trying).

So Hanoi, what a city- we were thrown into a world wind of a city that took me one hour to cross the street, the amount of motorbikes coming at you is incredible, I cant explain how many there were and how they all got on so breezly, its a sea.

We are exhausted but its the early morning, we got the day started by taking advantage of the Free breakfast which included stale buns, butter and a coffee( We also took Free buns upto our room for lunch with us everyday- I'd be happy to never see one again) which was an absolute treat and booked ourselves onto a city walking tour which took us around the old Quarter and showed us the best local places to eat and all the markets.
The first thing our guide told us was to never run across the street- just walk across slowly and the motorbikes will go around you.- Fair enough but easier said than done when 10000000000 motos are flying past you, the only thing you hear is horns.
In the end you don't even look really (How bizarre) and just walk and hope for the best.

We did a lot of lazing, hanging out on the 5th floor of our hostel which had a pool table, books and movies and men with guitars that made for great sing songs until the wee hours of the night.


Now remember us toying with the notion of buying motorbikes and going all through Vietnam, well we walked and walked and walked and walked one day through the rain to find the shop that was recommended to us- with no map and no ideas of where we were going we stumbled upon the nicest man who made us jump on his motorbike and took us straight there. We left with no bikes after carefully debating on how the hell we were going to drive in Hanoi, let alone out of it.

Our last day we booked ourselves in for a one day Halong bay tour. We were recommended to do the 1 night 2 days through our hostel but its 80 dollars which is a little over our budget so for 15 dollars we climbed aboard a lovely boat, opened our cheeky bottle of rice fermented vodka and sat floored at some of the views of Halong bay. http://www.halongbay-vietnam.com/photos/index.htm


The tour also took us to a large cave where Tom and I were so drunk and having a debated conversation about what our lives are coming to we missed the whole thing. It was dark though.


We stayed much longer than we intended but we loved it. We are catching a night bus down to Hue tomorrow.