Hanoi, Vietnam Day 1

It's our last wake up in our tiny studio apartment in Hong Kong. We are sad to be leaving as we have absolutely loved it here, however we are both ready to escape the city and explore somewhere completely new! After saying goodbye to our hostel and getting the train to the airport we managed to check in quickly and have time for a quick airport breakfast at Starbucks.

The flight was really smooth and the time seemed to pass quickly - we are officially in Vietnam! Airport immigration took a whole 3 minutes to get through and everyone already seemed really kind and helpful when buying sim cards (I've read a lot about how lovely the Vietnamese people are). Our hostel driver took us back to our new place - http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Central-Backpackers-Hostel-Old-Quarter/Hanoi/92771. Upon arriving at the reception the staff were very friendly and welcoming, they explained as guests we are entitled to unlimited free beer from 7pm - 8pm every night along with a nightly pub crawl (definitely a party hostel then). As soon as we got to our new 6 bed dorm we instantly clicked with the brits that we are sharing with and pretty much fell in love with the place straight away. We found out that tonight is sh*t shirt night (pretty self explanatory - it was compulsory to wear a sh*t shirt) so with realizing we didn't really pack anything appropriate we wandered down to the market to find something really...sh*t.

Our first impressions of Vietnam was - mayhem! There are about 100 mopeds on the road at a time going all directions and non stop beeping, the best way to walk without being ran over was to just keep walking and never stop. On the way back from the shop we saw chickens crossing the road, babies being bathed in dirty water buckets and men just about to sit down on tiny plastic chairs ready for their evening meal with no shoes or shirt on the street - this was a complete culture change from Hong Kong as you can imagine but very interesting to experience.

The party at the hostel started when the free bar started at 7pm, it was really busy at the sky bar on the top floor (amazing view too) as we rocked up in our new sh*t shirts. We had an amazing night and really did get on with all of our roomies! After playing numerous games of beer pong we followed the pub crawl to the first night club. As we arrived we were greeted by a Vietnemese guy who ushered us underneath a half closed garage door into the club. We had a great first night in Vietnam and what better way to finish it off but with some delicious Vietnamese street food called Bánh mì (this means bread in vietnamese) by a local lady with her tiny wooden stall!