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Hanoi has a different feel to HCMC. It comes across as less touristy (despite loads of tourists!!), the traffic is still noisy but less in your face and we found much more French influenced architecture. Altogether, the “old quarter” feels a lot more untouched and lived in.

We spent our first day on a Lonely Planet City Walk around the Old Quarter. With a stop for lunch it probably took us about 4 to 5 hours and we saw so much interesting stuff. Entire streets specialising in tin boxes, rope, blacksmiths, fake money (they burn it for good luck), fruit & veg, buckets, spanners & ratchets, grease, leather and PVC (not kinky stuff) and you name it there’s a street full of it. It does make shopping easy, (to man shop that is), know what you want, go to the street and buy it!

Halong Bay is quite astounding. It’s limestone karsts thrusting out of the sea, almost 2000 islands and guide described it as “a descending dragon”, which we thought quite poetic and very apt. Our pictures really don’t do it justice and we only scratched the surface.

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The trip included a visit to a cave as all the karsts are riddled with them. This one had a lovely legend of a wedding where most of the guests were animals and our guide used his laser pen to pick out elephants, dragons, unicorns and jelly fish all shaped in the stalagmites and stalactites. As with most legends, there were fertility symbols, in this case a very large breast with an equally large nipple…tee hee, snigger snigger!

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When Neil was working at RAC back in September, he took a call from Jill who wished to cancel her membership. In good RAC practice, a long conversation ensued and Neil agreed to meet with Jill in Hanoi!! So 5 months on we did, we met her and daughter Sarah, who is doing voluntary work here, for dinner and so as not to be confused with all the other tourists we wore RAC T-Shirts. We presented Sarah with some books and clothes etc that she could sell and put into the charity. A great evening was had by all and, maybe, we’ll meet again in Laos as we’re going to be there at the same time.

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No visit to Hanoi is complete without paying your respects to the great man himself, Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho). He’s been embalmed and lies in state for all to see. He’s just come back from his annual MOT in Russia and looked quite serene in his mausoleum. No pics allowed for obvious reasons and all bags and weapons had to be handed in before entry. Needless to say we deposited our AK47’s, rocket launchers, tear gas and Neil’s catapult before we went in!! It was actually a quite frustrating bureaucratic affair, “no go this way, must go that way” Blah blah blah!!! But it was worth it as he is “The Man” in Vietnam and we feel proud to be able to pay our respects.

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