Hanoi

I had this beautiful, detailed rubbish for story in my head, but I lost it, like all the liquid in my body, so I guess I'll skip to the short version:

After a very long journey, 3 flights, 4 countries and 42 sleepless hours later, we finally reaced Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. We spent 14 godforsaken hours at Bangkok International Airport, and I can't say it was the most exciting day of my life, but I take comfort in the fact that it could've been worse. I once spent a night at Stansted Airport (in the middle of the winter!), and let's just say I'm glad Bangkok's airport isn't as small as Stansted. Or worse still: Vasteras.

The flight from Bangkok to Hanoi was delayed a further 2 hours, which was just what we needed. And I kept thinking that if we didn't catch the swine flu there, we probably never would. As of yet, we still display no symptoms of such a flu (or any kind of flu for that matter).

Earlier that day, whilst still in Bangkok, I spent half a day's budget (slight overexaggeration) phoning the hotel in Hanoi to arrange for an airport pickup, as we would now arrive in Hanoi in the middle of the night. When we arrived, a taxi driver was waiting for me with a sign with my name on it. Needless to say, I felt overly cool.

Hanoi is a relatively quiet and calm capital. Relatively because after all, it is a big city in South East Asia, but I've seen worse. A LOT worse.

So by now, we've walked the narrow alley's of the Old Quarters of Hanoi up and down and know them like the back of our hands. We've bought conical rice hats (which I'm decisively unwilling to wear because of all the small insects and lice crawling in and between the tightly bundled straws). We've even seen the (boring) traditional Vietnamese water puppet show, which is said to be at its best here in Hanoi.

I do like Vietnam so far. The people are extremely friendly. One of the friendliest (and genuine) you can find in the East (it goes without saying that Easterners are friendlier than people in the West, despite their intrusive habits of wanting to sell you all sorts of crap for a special price, just for you!)

I would post some pictures, but a majority of my patience was lost uploading pics on facebook on a barely cooperative computer, so I'll ask you to just look at the pics on facebook, or alternatively, wait about two months till I get home and upload the pics then.