For our final day in Hanoi we agreed on a time to get up and be ready to leave by, since we had to wait for our laundry to be returned to us. However, I got fed up of waiting and was about to leave when Craig chimed in that he was ready to leave too. Izzie said she would be 2 minutes. I said I would wait if she gave me a realistic timeframe but she got irritated and told us to leave and wouldn't talk to us. Craig and I then went off to see the sights of the old quarter starting with the temple down the road from our hostel.
It was a tiny little thing, with christmas trees beside the altars which were covered in cans of red bull, bear, and choco-pies. We moved on to the temple on the little island n the middle of Hoan Kiem lake. Not all of the information boards were in english so I had to translate the french ones, but it made for very good practice! We atually ran into Izzie there but she disappeared again (to the ethnology museum as we later found out) There was a tree that was growing sideways into the water so Crag climbed up some of the branches (all going well) it was his descent fromt he treee that posed some problems. He made the decision to jump back onto the shore. He did not account for the mud. He fell over and covered himself in thick, sludgy mud. I was in hysterics as were any other tourists nearby. Somebody offered him a tissue and he sort of cleaned himself up. After giving up on finding Isobel, we hopped into a cyclo and went for lunch at a veggie restaurant I'd looked up. It was seriously yummy - lots of tofo which makes me happy.
After this we hit the women's museum. The first part was made up of artefacts from women who helped in the war against the USA which wasn't the most fascinating. The second part was about women who had raised several children and packed them all off to uni under difficult circumstances and a woman representative of some political party or other. It was really strange to read about the lengths that these people have gone to get higher education when it's so easy in Britain and is taken so much for granted.
We walked back from there getting a little lost but nothing serious. We stopped to buy ice-cream too. Izzie returned shortly after we did and we all set off to find a supermarket and stock up for our bus journey. This involved some aimless wandering around first. Izzie then popped off to the post office to call her sister and Craig and I had dinner as we found somewhere he could get cheap western food - he really is a picky eater)
We dropped our bags off at the travel agents and went to a commemorative memorial house which showed the type of traditional vietnamese houses, including toilets which is not something I should ever wish to be made to use!
Then came the bus journey. The ride from Hanoi to Nha Trang is long and we had bought seating tickets as sleeper tickets were sold out. We underestimated this. Overnight on a coach seat does not make for the best night's sleep in the world. My knees had begun to really hurt also so I couldn't get comfortable at all. Around 2 o'clock the man I was sitting next to got up to talk to the driver so I curled up over 2 chairs and got some kip until we stopped at a service station at 4am. After getting back on the bus I watched the sunrise and the guy being wide awake didn't want to sit down very much and I was left to curl up again and get 40 winks or so. Craig was extremely grumpy and seemed to think that he had it worse than everybody else. There wasn't much point in talking to him really. The bus stopped in Hoi An, originally on our itinerary but scrapped to save time. We were then informed of a 5 hour break. Most people were a little disgruntled because it meant a second night on the coach but I was quite positive because the only time we lost was a night in a hotel, and we got to see some of Hoi An. It was very quaint, we had dinner and ambled round the odd sight, if you can call it that. The main part of our time was spent wandering in and out of the tailoring shops. I got myself a dress since the only one I had packed had broken and had thus been thrown out.
We eventually got back on the bus. I was sat next to Craig this time. I threatened him with castration should he grumble or complain so he didn't and just huffed a lot and didn't keep still and took up lots of room. I got really fed up with him around half one and took a hint from some Vietnamese people, stole a blanket and lay on the floor. It was much comfier though I wish I could have stolen the hammock one man had strung between some of the chairs. I was made to get up off the floor around 5 being told that we were arriving when we were in fact an hour away form our destination. Ah lack of sleep!
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