Hello Hanoi

Day 3

Theme song: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

If you've ever had a panic attack, you'll dread the sensation of even feeling slightly stressed. The tightness in your chest, the inability to think coherantly, the desire to run into open space away from people - being unable to remember a four-digit code you used sucessfully two days earlier.

I still can't remember my pin and thinking about it just makes me start to panic a little so instead I'm living off my credit card and cash reserves. Successfully so far! Thank god for signature technology - once that dissapears, they'd better replace it with fingerprint/eyeball recognition or else I'm screwed.

So it was probably a good thing that I spent two hours in a Chinese tea house in Singapore, drinking tea and eating mooncakes. Tea solves all problems.

Day 4

Hanoi is a crazy city, true, but I think once you've been to Egypt any other cities attempts at being loud, chaotic, overwhelming and chauvanistic just pale in comparison. In fact, people here will actually take 'no' for an answer and be satisfied with a chance to practice their english instead. It's quite nice, once you actually stop looking at maps upside down and walking into traffic...

Went to a water puppet show last night - brilliant. Look it up on YouTube. Best thing I've seen in ages, much better than Transformers 3 (which I saw on the plane... would have considered it a waste of a few hours except that I couldn't really have utilised it any other way).

Off to Halong Bay tommorrow! YAY!