After our long and tiring overnight bus we arrived in Hanoi at about 6am and were met by touters offering taxis, motorbikes and hotels which was hard to deal with when you've literally just woken up. After getting organised and finding where we had to go we agreed to take a metered taxi to our desination, we've had taxi issues in the past but thought this was legitimate.....how very wrong. For starters what should have only been a 5 minute journey ended up being 10 minutes and when we arrived the meter, which had been out of our view, read 458000 which is nearly $50 Aus. I was tired, was in a bad mood from the touters hassling us and this just topped it off.....I was now really angry and started arguing with the driver who now all of a sudden didn't understand english so I started throwing a few Vietnamese phrases I had learned along the way and telling him I'm only going to give him $5 US, which is way more than the journey cost. So Deb and I are sitting in this cab, our packs are on the front seat near the driver and I'm starting to wonder how are we going to sort this thinking if we get out of the cab he's going to drive off with our stuff, so I say to Deb you stay in the cab while I get out and grab our bags, as soon as I got out of the cab he's hit the central locking, luckily Deb's still in the car and is able to unlock the front door, as I've opened it the driver has grabbed my pack....by this stage I'm absolutely fuming so I've reefed the bags out of the car yelling at the driver 'you think we're stupid and we're not'. Deb then said she didn't have a $5 note and now I'm thinking shit I hope I do, luckily I did and I threw it on the front seat and slammed the door. As Deb and I start to walk away she starts laughing and saying 'that was so funny, I'm so impressed with you'. Needless to say I wasn't finding the funny side of it at that moment, it was the first and only time I yelled at anyone on the trip but it was one of those moments when I'm thinking 'if you want to fight me today buddy, go right ahead'....he must of known it was in his best interest to be quiet.
After that eventful start we found a hotel, checked in, showered, ate and were ready to go again. We found a travel agent and booked tours for Ha Long Bay and Sapa and then wandered around the city for a bit and then went and visited Hoa Lo Prison or as it was later nicknamed the 'Hanoi Hilton', as we were walking around we kept crossing paths with 2 American couples with babies who we later started chatting with. Both couples had adopted Vietnames babies and it was their very first day as families, it was so lovely talking to them about thier journey and how long it had taken to get to the point where they could see and hold these gorgeous baby girls.
Later that night after dinner we went and seen the Water Puppet show, it was actually pretty cool, it's presented in a seated theatre and the stage is just a body of water with a backdrop, the whole thing is based around the traditional puppets they used in the rice fields years ago to tell stories for entertainment. The puppets are wooden and emerge from behind a small curtain just above the water and dance and swim around while a band play traditional music.
