Goooood Afffftttternoon Vietnam!!!

12 August - Am back on a jetplane after a very, very uncomfortable train ride (why can't Asian people be bigger???) but i've managed to score the emergency exit seat (which really doesn't have any additional space at all) so that's a small plus. I've met a dapper old Englishman émigré who gave me directions to getting to the old quarter where cheap(er) accommodation can be found. Also bumped into R(cannot remember his name to save my life) and Sussane, a dutch couple who I met through the other dutch groups back in Chang Mai. They were on their way home via Munich but it was nice to see a familiar face (not that I really get very far anywhere in Thailand without seeing someone or other from my trip).
Decided to change my route and go straight to Hanoi so I can head south from there and into Cambodia before hitting the Thai beaches at the end. Unfortunattly you can't get to Vietnam from Chang Mai so I had to go via Bangkok. I made a few phone calls before getting the announcement and having to rush off to the check in; a very large queue through the metal detectors meant I was one of the last ones on the plane but no big problem. The food on the plane was infinitely better than the train but still left a bit to be desired. The old English guy and a Kiwi traveller who was sitting across the aisle from me (he was kind of creepy actually) took the local bus into town and me and the kiwi shared a cab into town with a Vietnamese guy we met on the bus. We asked to go to a guesthouse listed in the lonely planet but were taken to a different street from the one in the Lonely P. We got there and I asked what the name of the GH was and they said, Mai Son, Mai Son (the same name) and the furniture inside seemed to be what the LP described and it was the same price. After I'd paid the card they gave Kim Tim Tim. The room seemed very nice at first, large bed, lots of antique furniture, westernish bathroom but after I got settled I realised that a spare single bed in the room was soaked with water from a leak in the ceilingnd the toilet was broken. Managed to get another room one floor up that is a little smaller but doesn't seem to have any glaring faults. First real culture shock i've had in a while - the streets make Bangkok seem like Burra. They're driving on the right side of the road for one thing and you have to walk straight into the traffic slowly and the cars and bikes will just move around you. I went for a bit of a wander, the shops don't seem to pester you that much but there are so many of them and they are all clustered together, about two blocks of shoe shops, two blocks of silk shops, three blocks of sunglass shops etc. However, the motorcycle taxis ar really pushy - the only way to avoid them is to ignore them.
I've also found a bar where they do a run from every Saturday at 230 (I've been told by a reliable source that today is Friday). Basically, turn up, pay $5 (everything is quoted in US dollars) and they take you in a minibus to an undisclosed location, you go for a run and come back and get drunk. Sounds like a plan to me.
I think i'm going to go get something to eat and then i've kind of planned to go for a drink with the creepy Kiwi (he's staying at the same GH as me). We'll see what happens next.
Just come back from a drink with the creepy NZ guy - we went to an Australian café to see if they would be showing the rugby tomorrow, met another Kiwi (slightly less irritating) and then went off to another Aussie pub before returning to the GH. Then, he decided we would go for another beer down the road. Matt (short for something Maori) is a rather strange man - big drinker, nice enough but likes the sound of his own voice too much and he gave me and a nice Danish couple a bit of a verbal assault on the conditions of minority groups in NZ and Australia - anyway, time to go to bed, i've got to see as much as I can of Hanoi before the run (and perhaps the rugby tomorrow night, ooohhhh).