Back to Hanoi

We arrived back in Hanoi last night from Halong Bay, the traffic was awful, it took us an extra hour to get through it. We arrived at our hotel and the bags were still there, thank god! We haven't got our visa for Laos yet and told by the hotel that we couldn't get it at the border and they could organise it for us and get the passports sent to us, but travel agents over here need to be taken with an entire salt shaker. I checked it out and it's all good.

Today we were walking around Hanoi, lots of interesting streets, we are currently looking for a street that is filled solely with Christmas decorations but so far we haven't found it.

Night (s)train tonight to Sapa (14 hours) we are travelling in the first class cabin (it was $4 extra). Might need to dig out the valium!!

Hanoi

In Hanoi the last 2 days, really nice city, we definitely prefer it to Saigon. Today was a very Ho Chi Minh orientated day, we went to his Mausoleum, Museum and his House... His house was a modest house on stilts because he wanted to be at one with the people.

We booked our tour to Ha Long bay...3 days 2 nights, one of them on a Chinese Junk ship (Junk as in type, not a rubbish ship!). We did a bit of shopping today and some serious hardcore haggling! Tina got some runners for 5 dollars, the woman wanted 16 for them to begin with!

The last picture was some woman beside our hotel burning a big paper elephant?? Must be some religious thing.