Our amazing adventure in Hanoi! By Ruby

As soon as we stepped out of our hotel we knew that Vietnam was going to be a lot different than Thailand, the streets were bustling with cars, people and lots of motorbikes! The sidewalks were crowded with tables and chairs from the store in front which made us walk on the road alot! There were many people walking along the side of he street trying to get you to buy something from them, there was always loud honking and shouting as people tried to move forward in their car while the motorbikes weaved their way through.

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We were in Hanoi which is the capital of Vietnam, we only stayed there for a couple of days but we definitely made the most of all the time we had here. For the first day, we headed out on the streets having a good look around and trying to get used to the area, we were mostly just trying to find our own way around as we had no sense of direction yet! We were trying to find some cool things to do and we decided to go to some museums for pert of teh day, we found the first one quite quickly, is was the history museum!

The museum told us all about the war in Vietnam , between the french and Vietnamese. It was almost heartbreaking having to look at what all those people had been through, i personally dont really like looking at museums like that but when you do you learn something! The museum also told us a lot about how everyone lived in Vietnam in the prehistoric times!

After that museum we went to the woman's museum with also told us a lot about the war, but this time it was more focused on what the woman had done! This one was more on the positive side more than the negative side though it still told us some of the bad things that had happened. After all the museums we decided to go to a monument called the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum! Sadly, when we tried to get through, dad wasn't aloud in because he was wearing shorts! So we went to go and buy some for him, then, once we were aloud in we started to walk down the long path. We took many photos of the building but one of my favourite parts had to be when a man walked over a yellow line and a guard blew his whistle at him!

We soon decided to head back home, find some dinner and get ready for the next day! Do you know that Vietnam has the most delicious bread rolls? Well they do! They are fulled up with vegetables and meat (Unless you get a vegetarian one) and they are so nice! I have been surviving on these here and they are probably going to be all that i eat here in Vietnam!

The next day we were going to be getting a tour around Vietnam by someone called Long which means dragon in Vietnamese. He met us at our hotel and then started to take us around the town, it was a walking tour which meant that we would be walking around instead of getting rides everywhere. But i think that even if we were driving around we would be going slower because of the traffic!

One of the places we went to was the oldest house in Hanoi, which was called heritage house. The house was built at the end of the 19 century and it still stands today, it had a kitchen, bathroom, dining room, bedroom and praying room. It also was a very open house and was full of greenery and even had a rooftop garden! The house is two stores high and part of the house was a store when it had been used as a real home for a family.

The next place we went to was a very yummy place to get icecream! Mila got vanilla in a cup, hazel got chocolate in a cone and Me, mum and dad got coconut on a stick! They were all so yum and we really loved the icecream, i think coconut might be my new favourite flavour!

We then went to another museum that was called Hoa Lo Prison, it was all so based around the war, the museum used to be a prison that the french used against the Vietnamese. The museum showed scenes around what it would had been like in the cells and it showed us all the punishments that would be given. It was awful and i hated looking at it all but again it was somethings that you should see to learn.

After that museum we went to another monument that was guarded with a gateway that was made out of two pillars, on each of the pillars you could se a dragon like creature that's face was facing you as you walked passed them. Long told us that when you walk pass the pillars the dragons will burn you up if you are bad but will let you be if you are good. Luckily we all managed to walk pass without being burned to death!

Long was such a good guide and we all learnt so much about Vietnam, we had had such a good time and his English was really good too!