Hanoi

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Do not look, just cross

The street that is. Dan is really good at following the advice on You Tube - you simply step out and walk slowly and steadily so that the bikes, scooters, and mopeds can manoever around you. He is good at it - but it is scary as &*%!$(MISSING). Map reading skills are put to the ultimate test here as all the streets in the Old Quarter run diagonally and the name of the street changes from block to block. Further the numbers on buildings are in no particular order.
Here in Hanoi we have met the first test of our hand talking skills - we were so spoilt by all the English in Hong Kong. We can say bia (beer) but avoiding dog is an altogether different challenge. There has been some rain, well truly they have been downpours. These are welcome breaks to the humidity. Dan figures he has already lost at least 5 pounds of water weight. He seems to think that this will be deducted directly from beer weight.
Today we walked all the way to the Hanoi train station to try and buy a ticket to the border with China at Lao Cai. It was absolute chaos. They hand out numbers but when our number was called people kept on going in front of us to the counter and we had to simply step in front and hold our ground. All of this to discover that the sleeper class of the train we want is sold out to August 4. On to Plan B. Tonight we are off to watch a water puppet show and then tommorrow morning we head to Halong Bay and island beach resort.

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