Hanoi day 3, 4, 5 & 6

Kath left on day 3 which was very sad. Her fight wasn't until 6.30pm, so we had the morning to grab food and do a little more shopping.
We got to the airport around 3.30 as we'd both heard Hanoi airport is chaos, but Kath checked in in no time and we hung out before a teary goodbye.
I then hopped on a grab motorbike for the first time in 3 weeks (Kath refused to get on one)! It was definitely an experience driving through Hanoi in rush hour, and took nearly an hour to get back to the hostel!
Returning to an empty room was very sad. It started raining so I used that as an excuse not to leave the room and get takeaway for dinner :)
The next couple days I still wasn't feeling very well so didn't get up to a lot. I checked out of our hostel into another with dorms, and had some great long lie-ins. During the days I just wandered round the city grabbing food and coffee, catching up on errands (including buying new glasses as mine broke a few weeks ago, and then I lost a lense to the sea in Cat Ba 🤣). On day 5 I thought I should do something more productive, so I went to the temple of literature. The temple was built in 1070 and was Vietnam's first national university, until 1779. Names of past scholars were inscribed onto huge stone slabs on top of turtle statues, and there were some nice gardens in-between the buildings. There wasn't loads to see there, but it's an important place in Vietnam's history, so much so it features on the back of the 100,000 dong note.
I'm finally leaving Hanoi tomorrow after pretty much a week here. I'm feeling 95% recovered, so I've booked to do the four day Ha Giang loop tour, and head up to Ha Giang tomorrow to start the following day!Read more