Hi guys, we promise to get the blog up to date as soon as possible after running over a month over. In the meantime here is a post on Hanoi. The first thing we noticed about Hanoi after we had slept and chilled from the bus ride from hell were motorbikes. Everybody drives a motorbike, and there appear to be no traffic laws either.
It was crazy. It took us 2 days to muster the courage to cross the road and then we did it with our eyes closed. Luckily the drivers seem to avoid you and we soon were crossing without looking. You can spot a newbie to Hanoi a mile off by the fear.
We soon realised that the 6 of us from the bus (I neglected to mention young Aaron in the last post, please accept my apologies for the oversight) were going to kick about together for a while, and when Jo’s better half James turned up we were a right little magnificent 7.
Hanoi was a very pretty city indeed, with a combination of old French colonial and southeast Asian charm. We were both quite taken with it, even though it had crazy traffic. I had heard that Vietnam is a haven for people out to get you and rip you off but I saw none of that. No culture that eats pies can be that bad.
We went to the Vietnamese womens museum with Nick and Debs whom we realised we were going to travel in the same direction as for quite some time, good job they rock. The museum had an exhibition on the roll of women during the American war (Vietnam war to us), and some of them were very tough. It also showed the tunnels they used to hide in, tiny enough for the women and their kalashnikov rifles only. We weren’t allowed to take photos.
The next floor up has some children’s paintings that we were allowed to photograph.
That evening we went out to a restraunt for food and had another one of those crazy traveller experiences. Having a meal next to us were an American couple Brooke and Brian that we had last seen in the Bell Tower hostel in Xian China nearly 3 months earlier. Crazy.
They joined us and here is a shot of us all:
And here is Brooke and Brian from Xian:
Nick, Debs, Jo and James joined us on a 3 day new years excursion to Halong bay which we booked through the Backpacker hostel. So all that we had left to do in Hanoi was to get a massage.
We are not naked and there were no happy endings although I did get called a monkey.