Post #55 - December 5, 2012 - Hanoi, Vietnam

What we did: traveled from Ninh Binh to Hanoi
Budget: 1,200k Dong/$60; Spent: 754k Dong/$38

Jeff here.

I can't believe we actually got up at 6:30am this morning after the night we had last night. Poor Patty was not well. She definitely has Traveler's Diarrhea and really had a horrible night last night. Thankfully, she was feeling better this morning, and good enough to insist that we make our train leaving for Hanoi at 8am. She's one tough cookie.

We had a small breakfast at our hotel (free), before we were driven by two members of the family that own the hotel by motorcycle to the train station (also free). Honestly, the value we got out of this hotel was incredible. It left me feeling like they did us a favour by allowing us to stay there. If anyone ever heads to Ninh Binh, which I would highly recommend, stay at Canh Dieu Hotel.

Our train ride was pretty uneventful. I napped on and off, and Patty slept most of the time. It was sooo nice to travel by train again! There's just something so very comfy about a train. The ride itself took about 2.5 hours and then we were back in Hanoi. It felt like we were coming home!

Once we stepped out of the train station and checked some signs, we knew where we were and decided to walk to our hostel. It took about 30 minutes, and the only notable occurrence was me stepping in a fresh, steaming pile of caca. Lovely.

We were greeted very warmly by our hotel's staff, which made it feel even more like we were coming home. We both really like Hanoi! After this we went to our room and Patty fell asleep. Poor thing was beat. She hasn't had any problems today, so that's a good sign. I, meanwhile, cleaned my shoe, which stunk like, well, caca. It was disgusting. I'm really glad that's over with!

Patty slept for most of the afternoon and I napped for a bit, too. We didn't leave our hotel until about 6pm and went in search of a place to burn our pictures onto DVDs. Unfortunately, the place recommended by our hotel didn't actually burn DVDs, which was a downer, since we are desperate to send our pictures home! We decided to then just grab dinner.

We went to a restaurant called Highway 4. We had been there before and it was nice and close to our hotel. We had a pretty decent meal, but at a not so great price. Patty ate a little bit, but her stomach was still a bit sensitive. We sat with an interesting older couple that we think is from England. It was their third time at the restaurant and the man was not impressed. He voiced his unfavourable opinion of the place loudly and often. Luckily, I don't think anyone working there actually understood a word he was saying. The couple seemed to be on a somewhat different kind of trip than us and, I think, were used to higher quality of service. Meanwhile, Patty and I are thinking to ourselves that this is the most normal (in terms of the service and ambiance) restaurant we've been to in a long time!

After dinner we hiked our way up to our room on the fourth floor of our hotel and settled ourselves in for a long night of blog writing. And that pretty much covers it. Tomorrow we're off to Cat Ba Island!!

Good night!