Hanoi - my last city

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Hurrah and Huzzah, I'm finally in Hanoi, the last city, the last big destination of this trip, unless you count Melbourne in January but that's another story.

Funnily enough two of the 'idiots' from my last night bus were on the night bus again, but such people when they don't have an audience, are thankfully less full of themselves. Bit of an ordeal, some local chap threw up several times, worse for wear, and the speed, despite my experience in Thailand they absolutely rocketed the road, so much so that the bus arrived at a bus station on the edges of main town at 5.30am, two hours early! Is a shock to arrive when you're still dozing.

Got a taxi with a nice couple from Melbourne, sadly we were lied to, not 50,000 dong for taxi, 50,000 dong each on arrival, lying bastards, so we forgot usual thing about not letting SE Asians 'lose face' and gave the little **** a facefull, he did not even take us to where we wanted to go, just to some place that would pay him commision so stormed off with my new found pals in a huff.

Hanoi is a dark shut up place before 6am so wandered around but finally found down a shady alley a lovely family guesthouse and got some rooms, after sipping coffee for 3 hours in their kitchen.

I am impressed with Hanoi, a nice touch of old world French colonial style with a bit of Asian buzz, you don't get hassled too much in the street, but crossing the street is a real adventure. Also their is not really one big tacky backpacker street, like awfull Kho San Road in Bangkok, but backpackerville is more spread out and blended in localville so I think it makes things less obvious and interesting.

The Hoan Kiem Lake is an excellent and relatively tranquil central marker and it's a superb city to meander around.

One week to go, so tommorrow I'm off on a compulsory Halong Bay Tour, a 3 day, 2 nighter which I hope I shall enjoy, and the I'll have a few days to chill out in Hanoi before the long haul back to Blighy.

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Photos

Cathedral
Spectacular, French of course