Hanoi, Vietnam

We arrived early in Hanoi and took a taxi from the travel office as we hadn't a clue where the hotel was in relation to where we'd been dropped off. We'd read about Hanoi taxi drivers who have fast-running meters and we were unlucky enough to run into one that morning. He drove literally around the block to our hotel (it was about a 5 minute walk!) and it cost 100,000 dong (about £3.50). We had the feeling it was too much but it was 7am and in no mood to argue. We realised we'd been scammed later in the morning when we took a taxi over to Ho Chi Minh's mauseleum about 5km away and it only cost 50,000 dong. We'd taken a taxi because it was Thursday morning and the mauseleum was closed on Fridays and only open in the mornings the rest of the week. Unfortunately our rush there was fruitless, it was 1st April and summer opening hours had begun which meant the complex had closed at 10.30am. We met a trio of English girls who had also missed getting in but they gave us a spare map.

We walked back towards the city centre, stopping off at the Temple of Literature. Whilst Cliff was buying our tickets, I was surrounded by a class of school kids asking my name. They were a happy bunch.

The temple was very tranquil and Liam thought the stone turtles were cool (as well as the live ones in the pool). We spent some time at one of the gift shops for Liam to choose a Chinese character pendant for himself ('Agility and Cleverness') and his friend Charlie ('Success'). Just got to get them home in one piece now.

In the afternoon we went to the Thang Long water puppet theatre, we bought the tickets just as the performance was about begin but still managed to get front row seats. The puppets are moved with long wooden sticks in the water and the stories usually centre on rural Vietnamese stories and in this performance it was the legend of Hoan Kiem lake (literally across the road from the theatre). It was very good visually and musically; there's a live band but nothing could stop me having a tiny nap.

Once again we lucked out on the food in Hanoi, finding some really good places to eat and watch the world go by. Cliff and Liam went for a run in the rain around the lake and we did some souvenier shopping on our last night including a new bag for Cliff to take it all back to the UK in.

We had just two nights in Hanoi before heading off to Halong Bay for our cruise.