Vietnam (Part 2)

... it's been a while since the last blog, and in all honesty, apart from just namedropping where we have been we have actually done very little! We have chilled, chilled and then chilled...

It all started with a not-so great time though. We headed out to Dalat, which was meant to be this great cultural place full of things to see and do... except there was nothing to see or do... we couldn't even find a decent place to have a brew! Gutting! We spent about 10 hours on a really dreary coach journey only to arrive in rain (which persisted for our whole stay!) and be dumped in the middle of a pretty bleak hole! Eventually, we got to our hotel and it was OK... no great shakes or anything, but OK... that is until we were awoke every morning by the loudest group of Chinese Tourists and Schoolchildren(!) who seemed to use our corridor as a place to scream, shout, play games, play the drums... OK, so the last one was a lie but you get the idea that they made a lot of noise.... It wasn't even us being lazy either, because we checked the time and it was 5am!!! My God! We had to leave... we cut our stay there short and got away as fast as we could book the coach and do one!

Next stop was Nha Trang... the beach destination of Vietnam. We loved it! It was such a lovely place with loads of chilling to be had! It had a paradise beach about 6km long (so plenty of private chill space), loads of ace restaurants and bars (ask Trace who is the World Champion at Pool? hehehe), good shopping, a quiet hotel and even a rather splendid waterpark! Yep, we had a great time in Nha Trang just dossing about really :)

However, we chilled just a tad too much and suddenly realised that we had spent longer than we should have as we only had a limited visa of 1 month... so, we had to cut out a little bit and decided to fly straight to Hanoi.

... and we were dead organised and everything. We booked a hotel and even a taxi pick-up from the airport... oh, and how lovely did our hotel look on t'Internet! Plush as you like with ace reviews!

However, the taxi dropped us off outside a right hovel with about 100 kids playing on the entrance steps. 'Oh well' we thought, 'it may be nice inside'... hmmm... it still looked a bit of a sh*thole once we got in as well actually... still, the room might be really nice- just what we need after a horrible flight... Somewhere to chill, have a bath, watch some TV... um... well... it was awful! This was not the place advertised on the Internet at all! It was a dump... in fact that is a compliment! It was so bad it made bad look good! So, in no uncertain terms we told them we were not going to be staying there as it was not the place we had booked and we picked up our bags and wandered the streets of Hanoi (just like the littlest Hobo- except he wasn't under threat of being eaten) to find somewhere new... we did, it was nice and we enjoyed Hanoi thoroughly! It's a great city full of fab buildings, nice cafes and lots of artsy little things to do, like the Water Puppet show, which was a good chance to hear Vietnamese music and see the crazy instruments they play! One such instrument plays one chord only and can only be played by men as it does funny things to women- who are also not allowed to hear the instrument until they reach a certain age or else they are bound to fall in love with the player... !!

We also walked around the lake in the Old Quarter (which was on BBC World today!) and visited the Pagoda there too... yep, we had fun and chilled a lot in Hanoi :)