Anh Toan Plaza Hotel Hanoi

... beautiful it is inside (obviously), and went kayaking which of course the baby without a life jacket got taken on, to top it off she started breast feeding her in the kayak! Unsurprisingly, they had to turn back which left us in the middle of the sea without a guide but even with the rough current, we all made it back safely (and shattered) onto the boat for a nice glass of red wine while the sun set. All the boats had to move to a safe location and got tied together ...

... to do next we bumped into Jasmin and Tams again (the English couple from the mud in Nha Trang). We chatted for a while before Cesca and I decided to visit the One Pillar Pagoda and the Ho Chi Minh Museum which are in the smae area around the back of the Mauseleum. The One Pillar Pagoda was quite intersting as it was built to supposedly represent a lotus flower which is a symbol of beauty here. To us it looked more like a tree house - but what do we know? The HCM Museum was ...

... br>In the afternoon, we caught a cab to go to the Military Museum. I had forgotten the VNese word for Military so told the cabbie to take us to the Soldier Museum; he rolled his eyes at me but knew what i meant. He started to take us for a ride around town but when he saw me consult my trusty map, he realised he couldn't snow such a smart cookie. Little did he know that i was oblivious to what he was doing, since the streets are so damn confusing ...

... we were escorted from the restaurant by the waiter, a young man who practiced his English with us throughout the lunch, and as we passed through the dining room all the staff stood to attention and wished us goodbye in typical Chinese style .We felt like royalty. Unfortunately the lift doors closed on Gwen as were to depart hotel and we had to apply a little first aid from our suite case before leasing the hotel.

A little shopping and ...

... though, was to take the drink off the guy before we checked the price, then, with another couple there, we all got embroiled in a debate on the price, with none of us understanding what the seller was saying, which we later decided was part of his scam. In the end we all got confused and ended up paying 40000 for a coconut drink which we saw someone else selling round the corner for 5000. The difference is about £1.40, so nothing in the grand scheme of things, but try paying 800 ...

... the capital in the south, as they did loose after all.
HEAVEN is in Hanoi - 10p a beer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We drank a lot of this after finding it on our first night, bloody brilliant!!

We put our passports in for the first chinese visa in Hanoi. Took 8 days! The Chinese have a lot of public holidays to watch out.

We partied a bit here and met a bunch of people, including an Israeli clown and ...

... into the hostel in fits of laughter.

We checked in and headed out to find Nats parents hotel. The humidity was a killer. By the time we arrived at the hotel about 20mins later it was like I just stepped out of the shower. We ended up in the pub next door to their hotel getting fairly lively. We had a good laugh catching up and we walked home about 12:30 looking for food. We found this place on the side of the road that served Gnocchi and some ...

... no information from anyone at all (the drivers just went for a wander, and sat in some hammocks, or spat everywhere - vile) we deduced from a signpost that this indeed was the border, and the place to check out of Laos was closed for lunch until 1.30pm.

We sat down on a concrete lip and taught the girls how to play ******** (it's a card game Nanny). This wasted a while and during the second hand about ten of the Laos men just came over and stood ...

... thinned out to a manageable throng. It had been raining most of the night and all day, which meant the road was covered in mud. Of course that meant that by the end of the day WE were also covered in mud. I got to try out my new giant cape which worked very well, although goodness knows what I looked like. I'm not sure what the temperature fell to but we could see our breath at one point and by the end of the day we were ...

... they have a phonetic script developed in the 17th century by a French Missionary, 29 characters and its based on Latin, but Quoc Ngu (pronounced: 'Gwawk Nguhr'.... I am still none the wiser), as its called, only became the official language in 1910, when the French were in the full swing of their rule. The characters are recognisably English, but normally covered in a multitude of different accent marks and extra dots here and there, and more importantly, the letter as you would ...