Sayonara Hanoi

Monday.

Last day in Hanoi. Had a bit of a lie in and got down late for breakfast. The waitress at the hotel now knows everything we have, she just double checks before toddling off to the kitchen.

Angela wants to steal her so she can be her slave, sorry, house help at home.  We could possibly squeeze her into Callum's luggage.

We found out today that the girl behind the front desk has a 7 month old daughter who lives with her mother in law an hour from Hanoi.  She gets to see her daughter three times a month and works in two hotels night and day whilst studying for an accountancy qualification. But on a plus note, at least she won't have a Hecs debt to pay off.

Before the taxi arrived at 11.30am and because we simply don't have enough of them yet, we went shoe shopping for more Converse trainers. We now have about 14 pairs of Converse's between the eight of us.

Ron almost shed a tear as we said goodbye to the staff at Paradise 1 (he's so european). It's like saying goodbye to your family said Kyra. 

They certainly were a helpful and friendly bunch; our next hotel in De Nang is a lot larger (80 rooms), so it will be interesting to see if the Aussies can charm the socks off the staff at this one.

Got to the airport having had a stop at a servo for diesel (20k dong a litre) and the girls all excitedly rushed off to use the drop toilet.  Ruby's feeling a lot better today, but the bus trip was leaving her a little queasy.

Nothing exciting happened at check in, Jonah is the current winner of the lightest bag award.

Callum had a dummy spit waiting for the gate to open, because he wasn't allowed a big packet of Pringles instead of the local knock off called Slide. Good to see the abject poverty of the hill tribes has had such a dramatic influence on Callum's attitude.

It was a pretty short flight to Da Nang, but what a totally different atmosphere. Glad we booked a bus, because there wasn't much in the way of taxis waiting at the entrance.

Big wide roads, much less traffic. Apparently it's going to be raining for the next five days.  That will be a big challenge to win our hearts.

The hotel room at Hoi An is quite swish, but it's looking a bit uncared for - chips in the furniture etc.  It's clean and has a good view and a happy hour from 5 till 7.  Girly cocktails for the boys as the beers in the hotel are twice the street price.

Kyra and Angela went into town to get some forged jewelery, while Ron and I looked after the children again. Fortunately we could do this from the comfort of the Little Pub, which is the name of the hotel bar that serves the half price cocktails. The kids frolicked in the pool in the rain as we supervised from the bar.  And before anyone gets too upset about pool safety, we could get to it easily from the bar because there's no pool fence. 

We established from the waiter that we were the only patrons present in the hotel, before realising that there was obviously a misunderstanding.  We were the only patrons in the bar. We could see at least two other bedrooms with lights on. 

The girls eventually got back from town with the glint of silver and gold in their eyes, and we headed off across the road to an eaterie for dinner.

We found a small family run place across the road from the hotel entrance where they had at least heard of a Vietnamese crispy pancake and she promised 10k dong local beers, which won us over. The pancakes came with salad, so either we'll all be toilet bound tomorrow, or the local water is far more reliable here.

The woman running the eaterie just happened to own the dress shop next door. It turns out she can copy the dress Kyra wants within a day, so she has disappeared with Angela to go through material.

Tomorrow is a stroll about town day. Should be nice and quiet.