Hanoi

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam. Again we'd heard mixed reports about it, but we liked our brief time tthere.

There's a very busy backpacker area with lots of souvenir shops, cheap bars and street food. We enjoyed a papaya and pork salad and also a beef BBQ grill with zesty dipping sauce. You can easily spend a day getting lost in this old quarter and sampling local foods. We also wandered around the rich French quarter with its posh shops and restaurants, visited the Vietnamese cultural museums and another prison museum too.

Locals flock around the lake in the evening. It was nice to just sit and watch it unfold; people practicing ballroom dancing, joggers, weird & wonderful gym routines (including balancing on your head right by the waters edge), kids roller blading and local students wanting to practice their English. We ended up with a group of students around us asking about England, the government, our travels, just so they could practice speaking English. ==Your heading here...==