Good afternoon, Hanoi
ANDREI - Flying in to the north of Vietnam. Hope the weather holds!
KERRY - We flew into Vietnam from Vientiene on Laos Airlines - and they were a good little airline as well! We even got a snack on board and free drinks - Easyjet take note!! We landed at around 3 in the afternoon and the sky was grey grey grey. We could not work out if taht was the weather or the pollution. As we had been flying over the boarder of Loas and Vietnam we had seen a haze of what looked like pollution in the sky that seemed to worsen the nearer we got to Hanoi. Once you are on dry land and on your way into the centre on the minibus you can understand the reason for this - this is motorbike central!!! And apparantly it is a lot worse in Saigon! What a contrast to the peace and laid back air that we had ecperience in Vientiene. This city is crazy, bikes and motorbikes are everywhere!! it is an organised chaos, and crossing the road is an interesting experience as we found out when we got off the mini bus and started to negotiate the old narrow streets of the old quarter!
Basically you learn to keep walking and ignore the bikes and motorbikes around you as they will swerve you, as long as you keep on moving!! There is no point tryiong to stick to the pavement as that is the parking space for all the motorbikes taht all the locals own! It's a sight that has to be seen to be believed! We eventually made it in one piece with our backpacks at our hotel - Mikes Hotel, which was a nice little place. We had booked it on line the day before and were relieved that they had recieved our booking. It was a little more expensive that we were nrormally paying at $20 a night, but it was a nice place the staff were helpful and it had AC - which is a must in Hanoi! my god it was soo soo hot! You only have to move a finger when you are outside to break into a sweat!
We decided to book a 2 day trip to Halong bay through the hotel as we were tired and hot, and could not be bothered to walk around for ags getting quotes (which we normally do!). We opted for the superior boat at $69 dollars each as we used some dollars that our friends DAve and Libby had given us for a wedding present and pushed the boat out (like the pun?! :)) as it is our honeymoon ( and i am getting a little bir sick of the really cheap accommodation!).
We had some dinner and then wandered the night market for about 10 minutes but then the rain dragged us back into the luxury of our AC room in the hotel.
There is no lift though so be warned if you have a room at the top of the hotel. There are not than many rooms so it is pretty quiet(apart from the normal traffic noise of Hanoi!) - is located in a good area as well near to the lake and lots of restaurants.
