Back to Hanoi and the Visa Screw-Up

I spent the morning recovering on the boat, chilling with Sarah and Bridget who we'd met the day before and making use of the sunbeds for snoozing! On the bus back to Hanoi we got chatting to Pazit - an Israeli who works at their embassy in Shanghai and Galit a friend of hers. We got them to teach us a few essential phrases like "no spice" for Martin and the strange way the Chinese count on their fingers using only one hand for numbers one through nine!

 

Back at the Sinh Cafe - Open Tour / Vietnam Freedom Tour (48 Luong Ngoc Quyen Street, Hanoi - never use it!), we got to hear further excuses as to why our China visa was now going to take until Monday to reach us instead of the already-belated Saturday as promised. Not a very clever story to tell seeing as they cited delays at the Chinese Embassy as the reason but then they only work five days a week and delivery to Sapa would take one day on the train so surely any delayed service would reach us on Tuesday or later?! Jokers.

 

There wasn't a lot we could do though so we checked ourselves into Sarah and Bridget's hotel - The Ocean Stars Hotel which they'd said was much nicer than the Darling Backpacker we'd been at before. It certainly was though you wouldn't have been able to tell from the near-identical business cards - even hotels get conned! Bia Hoi o'clock - we got to order "mol coc" (one glass) once again! Childish I know!