Vietnam - Hanoi

After yet another sleepless night on yet another sleeper bus, I arrived at Hanoi at 7.30am with all of 2 hours sleep...!

I headed to Hanoi Backpackers, where I had decided to stay. Unfortunately I couldn't check in until 12noon, but they did have free coffee and free internet...so that summed up my whole first morning in Hanoi....however, which sitting on the internet I ran into Mary Liz who I hung out with in Cambodia...which was a huge surprise, as I though she was back in Ireland..she was flying back to Dublin the following day.

We met back up again at 1pm, and headed out to see the Water Puppet Theater. It was quite interesting to watch, and quite possibly the most cultural thing I have done this whole trip. Unfortunately, but as expected, the whole show was in Vietnamese, so me and Mary Liz made up our own story lines as we went along....I think it was much more entertaining that way!

Walking around Hanoi made me wish I was staying there a little longer. It didn't really have that big city feel that I thought it would, which was brilliant. People were quite nice, and there wasn't very many random people trying to sell you stuff every 5 minutes....the complete opposite of Ho Chi Minh.

That night we decided to go out for dinner, Vietnamese style, and eat at one the side restaurants on the streets. At first it was great, we showed the waiter what we wanted in the Menu which was seafood noodles. After about 15 minutes our meal came out....however it wasn't seafood noodles.

Still to this day, I don't actually know what it was we ate. All I know is the next day I could hardly move, and couldn't afford to be any further than around 6 meters from a toilet....or all hell would break lose!!! I spent the whole day either sleeping or in the bathroom. It was quite a productive way to end my time in Vietnam.....!!

I wish I could have spent a little longer in Hanoi, however I am more than happy with amount of time I spent in Vietnam in general. All up I spent about 2 and a half weeks travelling through, and while it is a wonderful country with wonderful people, I definitely didn't love it like I loved Cambodia.

The next day....I headed to Laos!