Hanoi

This weekend I thought, 'Ach!  Living in a beautiful apartment with a swimming pool and a man who collects my rubbish and taxis that wait outside to take me into town and air con and two bathrooms just isn't enough!  I need something more in my life.  I need luxury!  I need hedonism!  I need... a Sofitel!'

So the Frenchie, because he is good like that, took me to the Sofitel Hanoi and I pretended for an entire weekend that I wasn't a poor slob and actually had the manners, upbringing and bank account to rightfully be there.  (I have two out of three of those things, of course: I am a lady, after all).

Turns out that when you go to a Sofitel, the airport pick up looks a little bit like this:

And also includes a free mini bar.  Wow.

Hanoi is nice.  We saw a lake with turtles that steal swords from really old Vietnamese men who go swimming in lakes filled with turtles with their swords.  We saw an enormous stuffed turtle - maybe the turtle that had stolen the original sword a thousand or so years ago.  We saw the old town and bought the prettiest pretties and sat for a loooooong time on the balcony of a tea house and stared at motorists and discovered that a clever person, somewhere, has designed helmets with holes at the back for you to put your ponytail through.  Genius.  We also saw the Temple of Literature, which was, of course, my favourite hang out.

The most incredible part of the weekend was on the way home when our flight was prevented from landing because of an enormous thunderstorm over Saigon.  We had to fly around and around a set of clouds for a good long time, and I'll admit, the turbulence when we had to fly through the clouds was pretty scary.  We tried to land twice, and had to abort.  The motion of the plane when this happens is more than slightly life affirming: down, down, down, down and then the pilot thinks, 'No!' and suddenly UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP! And UPPPPPPPPPP a bit more and then turbulence and then throooooooough the clouds and then this for a bit longer:

Pretty beautiful.  Have some more:

I hope you all appreciate the picture to words ratio in this post.  Sometimes I do keep my readers in mind... : P