Mar 2007

Well we finally made it.

We left Bedwyn at 5.30 on Wednesday afternoon and arrived here in Hanoi Thursday evening after losing aout 7 hours somewhere (the clocks went forward by that much).

Grandad kindly dropped us off at Heathrow in plenty of time, then we flew through the night (15hrs) across Europe and India to Bangkok, where we changed planes and flew in a smaller, older plane for another 2 hrs , landing at Hanoi at about 9pm.

Jackie had arranged for the hotel to pick us up, so there was a man with a sign saying 'Jackie Snell' at the airport and from that moment onwards we felt slightly out of control! We were bundled into an mpv and whizzed in the dark for aout half an hour to our hotel. Lots of beeping of horns and dodging other cars and motorbikes later, we arrived at Prince 1 hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi (there are about 40 Hotels in Hanoi with the same name).

We are all in the same room, 3 storeys up - lots of noise and hustle and bustle and noticeably clammy, but we all had a good night's sleep considering.

Today we explored Hanoi, which takes a bit of getting used to...

Dirty; lots of interesting smells; traffic all over the place (amazing no one crashes - and amazing how you can cross a busy road - the traffic just miraculously flows around you); people eating their meals out on the streets; people desperately trying to sell us things.

Still - we survived our first day and the children are upstairs in our one big room, chilling out.

48 hours to go before we head off to Vietnam for our first real family travel adventure. Emma is trying out her back pack to see if she can fit in her straightners. Matthew is planning on taking nothing much more than a jar of jam. Olivia is getting in practice, already in shorts and sandals. Jackie and David are panicking- will they ever get to the end of their 'to do' lists?

Having never done a blog before- will this work?