Hanoi

well i've been travelling for a month now which is pretty neat - seems to have gone very quickly. Hit a low the other day when i went into a (rubbish) internet cafe to sort out my photo's and ended up losing all of them.... except for the few on facebook. Especially gutted about the tubing photo's. I lèft Vientiane yesterday, and undetered by the typhoon, headed for Vietnam. The bús journey was a bit of a mission. From leaving my guest house in vientiane to arriving in the hotel in vietnam took roughly twenty-six hours. however true Lao P.D.R. style (Please Don't Rush) it involved a lot of waiting around. The worst bit was when we stopped for no apparetn reason at a small deserted cafe between one-thirty and 6 in the morning which annoyed me bit. The border crossing was a nightmare, firstly because on the laos side it was chaos to get the passport stamps to leave, secondly beacuse the communist vietnamese have excessive bureacracy and wanted extra money for stamps and things on top of the visa fee everyone got in advance, thirdly because we were close to the typhoon it was lashing it down with rain and so we got very wet running from the bus to the offices and fourthly because they checked our passports a million times. For the first few hours in vietnam all we could see was the aftermath of the typhoon - lots of flooding - fortunately the roads were not affected. I'm, now in Hanoi which is a million miles away from compartively sleepy laos. unfortunately by the time we arrived in hanoi it was dark and because of a massive festival on at the moment the old quater where the hotels are was packed with stalls people and motorbikes. Fortunately, a woman met as at the bus station to advertise her hotel and took us there. We got quite a good deal as well. Traffic in hanoi is ridiculous, bikes, cars and buses not to mention pedestrians do what they want when they want and love the horn. the result is a very crowded, very noisy and very poluted city. very lively though. I', probably going to do a boat trip of Ha long bay and then head south.