Ti top island

Hanoi 

We left  a dark cold and very wet Birmingham flying Emirates to Dubai a trip that I have done many times now, Emirates like most airlines and if fact all that I have looked at have fallen for what I consider to be the top up scam, that is buy your ticket at X price and then they start adding to that price for every little thing that they can, change a seat?, At a price, more leg room ? At a price. We being tight opted for the bucket price and the bucket seats however we didn't fair to badly at all, for me an isle seat on both journey thanks to Mike for allowing me the slightly more room for my long legs

Dubai was Dubai a massive airport sitting in the middle of a duty free zone, the transfer from our arrival gate to our departure gate took several lifts both up and down a couple of extremely long escalators and a trip on a driverless mono rail. Quite a painless operation until we ordered two beers, I am not going to tell you the price but I licked the glass dry and still left at least 50 pence worth on the rim.

The flight to Hanoi was longer to that of India by about an extra couple or three hours landing at about 13:00.

The customs formalities were painless although both the border officer and the check in at Birmingham took so long examining the visa on entry you heart jumped a few beats.

Landing in Hanoi was very similar to landing at Bangalore really civilized and not the mad rush that some of the other Indian airports are.

We were met by our barely English speaking driver for a seamless 40 minute drive to our hotel in the Centre of Hanoi city the Silk queen located in hang bong street an excellent 9 storie hotel with a small pool on the 10th floor, no not a typing errror in Vietnam there is no groundfloor or in lift speak floor 0 

The lift starts at floor one so the fifth level is on the fourth  level. Our room was excellent, on suite, with the biggest toilet I have seen at first I thought it was one of the new tangled Japanese wash and dry with the option of a waxed finish type but no it was a simple flush toilet with a whirlpool type device at the bottom a most strange arrangement. 

We decided we would not succumb to the sleep deprivation that we had suffered being awake for something like 24 hrs ,well if you want to be accurate 24 hrs minus the 7 hrs lost to traveling east.

It always fascinates me the time difference it's hard to think that here I am at 3:00 am when at home in Taunton it's only 8:00pm.

Since being given a rather swish Garmin Felix all singing all dancing watch I have been able to cope with the change much easier, my secret is to sit down and select a really good film one that you can get engrossed in and keep re synching the watch using the gps function, this sets the time according to your location. Which when traveling East means your watch is slowly wound forward, so in practice you sit to watch a three hour film and four hours later it finishes, do this several times during the flight and hey presto your watch brain and real time in your chosen arrival are in in sync, that being said why am I wide awake at 3:00 am ?

On our second day mike had arranged a bat trip around Hang long bay 

The boat is an amazing experience and something not to be missed we were picked up at 8:00 from our hotel and driven the  50 or 60 miles to the coast where we picked up our floating hotel, staffed by a crew of about 6 they certainly knew how to look after us food kept coming and each meal consisted of several courses all of which were really well prepared and presented the pictures literally do tell the story.

I am not sure how many cabins there were but our party consisted of 4 couples ( not that we were a couple) our room had an on suite bathroom with shower and two single  beds. With massive pillows that you had to climb over to get over.

It was one of the guest 14 birthday and as soon as they found out they prepared the most wonderful carved melon hopefully there will be a photo.