The Knight Bus

This morning we walked barely 5 minutes from our hostel to a huge indoor market which sold anything you could think of. The rows of stalls were jam packed together making it hard to squeeze past people. Women that were selling clothes could be found napping on piles of packaged items in little corners, others were sat in front of fans, trying not to sweat. 

From there we walked over to the royal palace (very gold and grand but pretty small) and to the Ho Chi Minh memorial thing. Unfortunately, due to our clothing we weren't allowed in but we were happy enough to see the outside of it. 

For lunch we went to a poshish restaurant as it had aircon. Who can refuse aircon? I went for stir fried duck with steamed rice. It was lovely but there was a little too much fennel for my liking. The restaurant is non profitable though as they train up young people who are having a hard life and need help. 

It was still the hottest time of the day at that point so we went to the art gallery. I'm not big into art (I actually find it rather dull) but there were some cool pieces; we were deciding which ones we'd have in our own houses. 

On our walk back to the old quarter (where the hostel was) we stopped off at a few Made in Vietnam stores. These sell H&M and Zara clothes (as well as others) at massively reduced prices, probably because they are all made in Vietnam. I still didn't want to pay that amount though so we went back to the night market after tea for half an hour to attempt haggling again. I got a little bit of money off a dress so I didn't fail but it was still £2 something (I only wanted to pay a pound). 

We had booked a tour to Sapa with our hostel and the night bus left at 9pm so we prepared ourselves for what we knew wouldn't be the most comfortable journey. It wasn't too bad. The seats were all reclined back, almost like a bed, so we could sleep quite easily and there was aircon. Let's see what Sapa has in store for us.