Hectic Hanoi

We arrived at the airport around 10:30am. Immigration was no trouble and we were given month long visas without any questions. It had taken us a while to get through the border checks and down to our luggage due to long queues, toilet stops and form filling out. When we got there most people had collected their bags and gone. Mine came round pretty quick. Lauren's didn't show up. We talked to the people at the luggage lost and found and apparently it never left Auckland. So Lauren has absolutely nothing with her apart from what she's wearing. Hopefully her rucksack will be dropped off tomorrow morning but we will soon find out.

When we eventually got out the airport we had someone from our hostel waiting for us. We got in the car and off we went. This was the first time we encountered the madness of Vietnam drivers. There was hundreds of mopeds just going in and out of the traffic and everyone was beeping like mad. We had several near misses but we made it to the hostel without killing anyone.

We were able to check in and go to our room straight away which was amazing as check in wasn't supposed to be until 2pm. We're in a 6 bed ensuite that has plenty of room. We dumped our stuff and had a little lay down on the beds. After a while we decided to go out. This was the second encounter with Vietnam's crazy drivers. Crossing the road is a near death experience. Mopeds are coming from all directions in no real order and beeping away. And they are everywhere. They're parked on the pavements so you have to walk in the road and they outnumber the cars about ten to one. There was mopeds with one person on, with two people, with two people and kids, and we saw some that were laden with China cups etc.  Utter madness. We found the best way to cross the road was to just start going when there was a little gap and just not stopping. The mopeds would go round. If you hesitated you were more likely to get hit.

We went to the lake in the middle of Hanoi and looked at the red bridge. It leads to a temple but we didn't go in. We wandered around for a bit and then went for a soft drink. We planned some stuff while drinking and then headed to a travel agents to book, before heading back to the hostel.

We just hung out for about an hour and a half and then headed out to the night market, which was packed full of stalls and people. Lauren got some new sunglasses for 3 quid. We walked around for a while before heading back to the hostel for an early night.