Hanoi

We went to our room and took a shower. Afterwards took a nap, we woke up around 15.00. Before going out we decided we would be staying one more night at the same place so we wouldn't have to waste time searching for another place. (and at 15US$ a night it ain't that bad anyways...).

At the hotel lobby I exchanged 100US$ into Vietnamese Dong, and became a millionaire instantly :D. 100US$ got me 1.7 million Dong! Now the plan was to get the train tickets for the trip to Ho Chi Minh City. The girl at the hotel lobby helped us to check how much it would be but the ticket agent she checked with charged a lot more then we expected to be paying. So we decided to go to the train station to get the tickets ourselves. Before heading to the train station we had something to eat: "Bun Rieu Cua" which is some local style soup noodles with crab meat. Tasted pretty good, but might have also been affected a bit by the fact that I was really hungry by that time already ;).

Afterwards took a taxi to the train station, when we were about half way the taxi was stopped by the police and the driver had to get out. We were left alone in the taxi for a while until the police informed us to get out of the taxi and they arranged another taxi to help us finish the journey. Not sure what was the reason he was pulled aside (I guess it might be because he was not wearing seatbelt). At the train station we went up to the counter and got the train tickets for departure the coming Tuesday. We will be departing at 23.00 and be staying in a hard sleeper compartment (57US$ per ticket, not bad for an almost 30 hours train ride).

After we finished at the trainstation went for a walk through the city. We had dinner and later ice-cream, and then went back to the hotel. On the way to the hotel a guy on a motorbike stopped me and asked if I was interested in buying books. He showed me he has a copy of the lonely planet Vietnam; but already carrying that one from the library. Did ask him wheter he had a copy of the Cambodia version. He said he could arrange it and asked another motordriver to go get it. A few minutes later the motordriver got back with a copy of LP Cambodia. They asked 250.000 Dong for it. With some negotiation got the price down to 70.000 Dong (+/- 30HK$). BTW copy is something you have to take literally, they really copied the original lonely planet.

Went back to the hotel to drop of some of our stuff and went outside again for some drinks and some more food.

Now back in the hotel again, it's 23.30 and hopefully will be enjoying a good sleep very shortly.
(will try to post some pictures tomorrow, as today I tried a few times but uploading kept failing for some reason :( )