Ok, this is madness, vietnam is just insane.

Got the overnight bus from Hue (well just, we were one minute late and they were so hacked off with us- vietnamese men must have seriously high blood pressure) So horrendous bus journey, – not a wink of sleep but made it Hanoi after 13hours!

So we got to Hanoi bus station and were told there were free taxis to take us to the town centre (bollocks were they) They just took us to a hotel, where our bags were taken out the boot and into the hotel so we had to go in and get them. They then blocked the door and tried to sell us a room as they always do , so ‘same same’ as far Vietnam goes. But this time the guy was getting pretty aggro with us, and demanded we pay for the taxi – so we kicked off a bit having been told it was free – bad move but It was the last straw, seriously all these peolpe do is lie and cheat and I really hate making generalisations but these peple have serious serious attitude problems. Anwyay eventually when it was apparant that we wernt going to get out without paying we gave the guy the money, which he then took, ripped up and threw back at us! (WTF?!) So they let us go then, and we had to walk to the hotel we had booked.

So welcome to Hanoi! Its mad – its worse than Saigon with traffic. So we stayed one night and the next day took a trip to Halong bay where we stayed a night on a boat docked in the middle of the Karst mountains – stunning! Spent the time sunbathing on deck (its like a pirate ship!) and jumping off into the water – did some kayaking to the amusent of everyone else (we ended up with this kayak with facing seats and had a bit of confusion as which way to paddle – very smooth!) Just got back to Hnaoi today, and getting the overnight train to Sapa tonight for a couple of days.

(Mum/dad/peter, see my comment on the last entry)

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Posted from Viet Nam:

posted Saturday May 2006