Hanoi so far

The bus trip was very painful. The seats in fact hardly reclined at all and the actual trip dragged on for roughly 14 hours. We arrived in Hanoi and by the time we got to our pre-booked hotel it was about 9:30am. For the remainder of the day I had a particuarly stressful time trying to organise requirements for my course, which the university hadn't told me about before I left Melbourne. Anyway...
On Saturday night we had a lovely and very filling dinner but as I had been unable to sleep at all on the bus on Friday night I was very tired. On Sunday morning we departed Hanoi early for our Halong Bay trip, which was fantastic. Although it was overcast and quite cool our guide was very funny and the boat was wonderful. We only had nine people on our tour, which was really nice as apparently on cheaper tours they cram the numbers in. There was an Australian couple similar age to us, who were really nice and a Scottish woman who is making her way back to Glasgow after working in Burma. The last four were a Canadian family who were nice but a bit strange.
We arrived back in Hanoi this afternoon at around 4:30pm and tonight are going to a Vietnamese man, Minh, house for dinner with his family as he knows my parents. Tomorrow and Wednesday we are doing the sights in Hanoi and on Wednesday night we are travelling to Sapa for a few days until the 18th when we return to Hanoi and flight to Laos.