Hallo Hanoi....

After a very comfortable 2 hour flight courtesy of Qatar Airlines (in which I managed to watch the new Muppets film, which was awesome and had me laughing the whole way, much to Lucy's disgust) we landed at Hanoi about 9.45, about 30 mins late. The customs at the airport was the easiest (though not sure if that means best or worst, depends on your intentions I suppose) and we got through in about half an hour or so, which considering we had to receive our Visas too was pretty good. Our Taxi driver, though quick to point out our unavoidable tardiness (there I go again with those big words mum!) was waiting for us at the door with a sign with Lucy's name on it, which made us feel important!
The drive to Hanoi was about 45mins/1 hour long and gave us plenty of time to stare out the window and enjoy the music our driver had carefully selected for us, recognising that we were Young and British and so changed CDs from soothing, lovely Vietnamese music to trance and rave music.

On approach to our hotel, we noticed that the roads must have been designed at a time where Mopeds were the only things in vietnam that were motorised - there was not enough room for one car once you left the main roads, let alone two cars...let alone 2 cars and a moped...let alone 2 cars and several mopeds...let alone 2 cars, several mopeds and lots of pedestrians/stalls! Nevertheless me and Lucy loved it, really quirky and full of character even though we had only seen it from our taxi window. We found our hotel after our driver said (in very broken English) that he could go no further and that we'd have to walk down a small, dark alley on our own, which we thought was preposterous (again mum look!) after we'd seen it online, but we did indeed find it in this little alley...it was tiny! Or at least width wise it was. It's probably smaller across than my house at home, but 7 storeys tall, hidden by another hotel of similar build...actually most buildings are built like this, hotels, houses, it's a bit odd, but again adds to the character to Vietnam.

Despite arriving gone 11pm the receptionists were still up, actually concerned for us as we were so late, thinking maybe we'd missed the taxi! A guy and a girl, they spoke very good English and were very friendly, showing us to our room, which was (and still is, come to think about it, not much has changed) very nice. We pretty much crashed when we got in, exhausted after nearly 2 days of moving around (remember the fun bus journey we had?)

The next day we ventured out into Hanoi, armed with a map, to explore and see some sights. The streets were as exciting/scary in the day as at night! Mopeds outnumbering cars and people combined everywhere, weaving in and out of pedestrians, cars and stalls. To cross a road here, you literally have to just walk slowly into the road regardless of how many mopeds, car or buses are coming - the idea being if you walk slowly, they have time to swerve and miss you, by just enough that you don't get hurt but you Kack your pants with fear. It's quite fun though!
We walked towards the centre and found ourselves outside a water puppet show...why not? It was about an hour long with 11 parts. It was...different. Traditional music by a live orchestra sat to the side accompanied each act, which told either a Vietnamese story or fable. It was quite enjoyable, the puppets being both simple but quite effective with how the puppeteers controlled them from behind a curtain several feet behind them. The main drawback being the entire show was in vietnamese with no English translation - or any translation - except for an A4 programme explaining each act, badly. This wasn't too much of an issue where there was no dialog...in 3 of the scenes...but nevertheless we enjoyed it.

After the show we visited Hoan Kiem lake, which is in the middle of the city, and some sort of shrine/memorial to someone famous in Vietnamese history (someone to do with the army that defeated the Chinese in the 14th century or something, feel free to Google it, I'll wait for you.............back? Cool I'll continue)

The lake itself was centuries old, with the little temple/hut/thing was built in the early 19th century. It was quite impressive, with a little bridge into the middle of the lake to reach it and all the shrines in the hut itself being pretty spectacular, with natives visiting the shrines ti offer money and other offerings as a thank you .Whilst impressive, the hoards of (bloody) tourists took away some of the majesty of it (the overcast weather didn't help either). After another little wander around the streets we headed for some dinner...(boring skip forward)....after dinner we headed for the Night Market, which we had heard lots about and was excited to go visit. To be honest, it was crap. Just full of tat, most selling either phone cases or very bad fake clothes, no little nik-nak, quirky Vietnamese items that we were looking for. Needless to say we didn't stay long. And a good job too! We had to be up early for our trip to Halong Bay! Stay tuned Blogees....