Sunshine 2 Hotel Hanoi

24th to 26th Aug 2007 Well after a 2 hour delay to my flight from Vientiane, Laos, I touched down in Hanoi, Vietnam at 2100. At least my taxi was waiting for me when I came through customs. Yesterday I had a getting to know Hanoi day along with booking a few trips. I booked a city tour for today (26th) and a 2day/1night tour to Ha long Bay staying overnight on a junk boat. The traffic here in Hanoi is a bit manic to say the least and you take your life in your hands when you want to cross the...

Happy in Hanoi It was great getting to Hanoi. The army personel in loud green uniforms, as well as the dull communist (sorry, socialist) architecture straight away told you you were somewhere different. After the stink and heat of Bangkok, Hanoi was a dream. Lush paddy fields lined our taxi ride in, the people were friendly, and remarkably, it was cold. Well, jumper cold. Not Edinburgh cold. It's not very hard to see the French influence in the city (and all of Vietnam by all accounts), every...

Back in Hanoi - Cooking up a feast.... Arrived back in Hanoi after our Ha Long bay trip and decided not to go back to the same hotel.... we'll miss those rats but I think we will cope. Sunshine 2 hotel was perfect as it had it's own internet in the room didn't seem to have any rodent friends and we soon relaxed by booking ourselves onto a Vietnamese cooking course at a nearby restaurant. None of the menus inspired us much but the fact we could eat on this one along the way was a good selling ...

We decided to take a 2 night 3 day boat trip to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island. We booked with Sunshine Travel (Sunshine Hotel 2) Ma May Street. It cost us $80 each...all food included. We were a bit weary booking it as you cant help but feel cautious handing over money in Vietnam! But we had nothing to worry about....the whole trip was amazing. Overnight on the boat, which was a great cabin for 2 with bathroom and shower. When we arrived at the boat after a small 3hr minibus journey from Hanoi...

Up at 4am to catch our flight. Arrived here at 9am. We met up with a Swiss girl Anouk and she stayed with us for the next couple of days.We ended up at the Prince guesthouse which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. There was an old man asleep in the bed as we got to our room, looked like he lived there but after much giving out to the hotel dude we got the whole bedroom re cleaned! Not the best start you would think. Anyway Hanoi is mad! One word to describe it is noisy!!! Cars and motorb...

Ok for anyone who may be going to Vietnam in the future do not stay in the Prince guesthouse! Flippin mental assylum. Got up at 8am, awake since God knows what time! We found our little heaven in the Sunshine 2 hotel on the Ma May. The rooms are fab and we got a power shower and a computer to boot! 3 of us in the room only $8 each! Today was museum day. Headed off to the Museum of Ethnology. Our taxi driver was a bit confused about where it was so when a security guard put him right, this was...