I'll say one thing for those French colonialsits. They had good taste...

- This entry was written sitting on a junk boat off the coast of Vietnam. Jealous yet? -

Well what do I make of Hanoi after my 3 nights there? I can honestly say its the best city - and potentially the best place - I've been to so far. The Old Quarter is THE image of South East Asian cities I came here with. There are stalls in alleyways, doormouths, all along the pavements, food of all sorts available everywhere, the buzz of 10 billion motorbikes (that's just a rough estimate I'm sure you'll understand) and a much stronger sense of national identity (Large Capital v Large Capital) than Bangkok.

The bustle in the city is immense but its easy to drift in and out as you please as the focus of the busyness isn't on you, the way it is in other tourist heavy areas. The motorbikes are pretty crazy, but as long as you keep a steady pace when you cross the roads 99.99% of the time they will avoid you. The other 00.01% you'll have to pull off a leap that would make James Bond proud. Hopefully that's me had my one for this trip.

The food is excellent and CHEAP and for those of you heading out my way I can recommend the water snake - somewhere between salmon and tuna in texture but its own flavour.

The people are really friendly - although repeatedly being asked if I'm married very early in the conversation (by both men and women) is a little odd.

For the first time in my trip, I didn't go and do the sights almost straight after arriving in the town. I just sat back and soaked in the town. I did go to the musee des beaux artes which was well worth the 65p entry fee. The rest of the sights will be done, but not til i come back from Ha Long bay or Sapa.

The weather here is great. The roughly five degree temperature drop from Bangkok was amazing, and the humidity is so much lower. Makes it so much easier to turn down the people who try and pick you up in taxis/cyclos/bikes. Although I do occasionally like to ride the motorbikes for fun.