"Just us and 2 million mopeds"

On route to the border in Lao National park
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A very long and bumpy bus journey took us to the border town of Laksai in Laos, our last stop before we reached the border to cross over into Vietnam. Not too much too report about Laksai as it is a fairly small town (just one main street) with the obligatory Laos market selling everything that you could possibly imagine, a bar next to the hotel with a "madame" at the door and "the onlyone" restaurant, which literally did as it says on the tin and supplied the only restaurant food in the town. The scenery enroute was fanstastic with sleepy Laos villages displaying chickens, wooden houses on stilts, buffalo, children playing in the road and dogs and cattle just mooching about in the midday sun and avoiding our minibus as it beeped. The highlight was climbing into the limestone hills covered in jungle and just standing in the peace and quiet to admire the views and watch the world go by.

Visiting the sights
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Anyway, we crossed the border yesterday morning (Friday) and found the 'officialness' of it all very interesting. We were asked to pay 1$ US when leaving Laos, even though the sign by the border said "1$ US to be paid on Sat/Sun only", we weren't going to argue and then we got some funny looks from the border officials when entering Vietnam, but eventually managed to get through! The journey from the Vietnam border to Hanoi was certainly a long one - 10 hours on a minibus in total but the scenery enroute again made it all worth while. Vietnam is very different to Laos in that the population is that much higher and so there are people everywhere. Whereas in Laos we could go for quite a distance without passing another car, in Vietnam it is carnage - there are trucks, buses, car and mopeds everywhere! Each one is particularly proud of its horn (!) and so they are all constantly beeping at each over, over-taking within a whisker of each other and driving often on the wrong side of the road! At first this is a little un-nerving but then you don't see any accidents and so just sit back and enjoy it. Everywhere along the road there are paddy fields with families of Vietnamese working them - all in their green army hats or conical straw hats! There are oxen/water buffalo pulling the ploughs across the field and ducks and chickens being carried along on mopeds in metals baskets. It is just a frenzy of industrious activities! The houses are also very different here to Laos as many of them are made of brick and are thin and 3 storeys high, not like the wooden houses on stilts in Laos. The real experience was getting off the bus to have lunch at a restaurant chosen by our driver. We walked past the carnage left by the previous customers and then past the kitchen to the toilets - which were flooded squat ones! The kitchen being right next to the toilet was quite a concern for some (even us to be fair) and also maybe the flies, but to be polite we still had some chicken and rice - relatively safe we thought! Even more off-putting for others were the cats and dogs that kept walking past and under our table when we were eating - needless to say that rstaurants in Hanoi are slightly better and our tummies have been fine!

Everything goes on these bikes too, it's like our cars at home - whole families (even newborn babies we have seen) with up to 4 on a bike, animals such as chickens and ducks in cages...

Changing of the guards
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We arrived in Hanoi late last night and walked to a restaurant on the lake for dinner. After the full days' travelling we were not really in the mood for partying and so headed off to bed afterwards. Our first impression of Hanoi were craziness - mopeds and motorbikes weaving in and out of the roads everywhere, beeping and honking. We since found out that the population of Hanoi is 4 million and there are 2 million motorbikes - it figures! Everything goes on these bikes too, it's like our cars at home - whole families (even newborn babies we have seen) with up to 4 on a bike, animals such as chickens and ducks in cages, sofas, wares for the market stacked high, huge logs etc.

Moped madness
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Today has been an action-packed thrilling ride - literally! We set off this morning to go to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum to see him lying embalmed. Rather than walk we decided to "do in Rome" and took a motorbike tour of the city starting with the mausoleum - don't worry Mum we were on the back of a bike and the drivers were very good with us! We queued in 38 degrees of heat for an hour to get to see Ho Chi Minh in his embalmed, dead state and then were hurried past him by Vietnames guards dressed in white. He looks very serene in his air-conditioned tomb - very much like Lenin. There were also lots of people there to see him and clearly he is seen as a great cultural figure in Vietnamese Communist history. We then proceeded to visit his residence with the rest of the city it seemed and then take our tour on bikes of some of the major attractions - the old town with sugar street, paper street etc, the lake where a B52 bomber was shot down and the jail where they sent the Americans flying the plane to in 1972, a temple on the lake and a gorgeous noodle bar for lunch where we had vietnames ramen with beef for around 1 pound! The best thing was being chauffeured around on the moped and seeing the city from a different angle - the breeze helped too!

Typical load for a bike
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Tonight we are off to see a water puppet show (famous in Hanoi), dinner and maybe drinks. Tomorrow we head for Halong bay which is on the coast and we take an overnight boat trip to swim and see some beautiful caves - very excited. The hard thing about being a tourist here is the heat (I know that I shouldn't complain) and no pool in our hotels, so 36 hours by the sea will be bliss!