Day 65 of The Big Adventure. 
We went next door for some breakfast due to the lack thereof in our own hostel. 

We sat down to be informed that there were no fruit shakes or juices. Not a great start. 

We ordered anyway and this morning we were all in the mood for pancakes. Freya and I had banana (can’t go wrong) and Parker had pineapple pancakes – a very rogue decision. 

They came and were perhaps a little on the stodgy side. When Parkers arrived we all tried some and declared pineapple the wrong texture to go in pancakes – far too hard. 

We decided to go to the beach that day so had a little Google and set off in the right direction. 

The beach was a little hidden bay that you had a climb up a small hill to reach. It was beautiful but cloudy.

We lay on the sand and sunbathed and Freya and Parker frolicked in the sea. 

We had to be back in time for our transfer to Hanoi at 3 so we headed back to the hostel to check out and get our stuff. 

The lovely man said we could have the night for free because he’d seen how upset Parker was about the lack of free breakfast. 

Hilarious. 

Parker hadn’t meant to be quite that feisty but we weren’t going to say no to a free night!

We set off to find some lunch before the journey which turned out to be quite stressful.

They were very slow with the food and Freya and I ended up getting ours in takeaway boxes. 

Anyway we began the long journey back to Hanoi. 

It was rather sombre because we were all quite aware that this was the beginning of the end of our trip. 

We didn’t arrive back in Hanoi until around 9.30pm. 

As part of the bus ticket we’d booked in Phong Nha we’d got a free nights stay at a hostel. 

We typed the address into Google and instructed the taxi driver to take us there. We arrived and wandered up and down the street but couldn’t see it anywhere. 

We found the right number and went inside. Noone spoke English. 

In the end someone wrote down a different address on a piece of paper and gave it to us. 

We looked at each confused.

Tripadvisor, booking.com and google maps all had it listed as being here. But it clearly wasn’t. So we got in another taxi and headed to the new address. 

It was indeed located at this other address and were were all astounded as to why they would do that?! 

The other hotel must get so annoyed with people constantly coming looking for a completely different place. 

We went up to the receptionist and explained that we had a free nights stay as part of our bus ticket. She said she needed to see our bus ticket but the bus driver had taken our ticket when we got on. 

Parker got feisty again but this time it didn’t work. 

So we were stuck in Hanoi at 10.30pm, with nowhere to stay. Oh good. 

We were only a street away from where we stayed last time we were in Hanoi, we wandered back in that direction.

We decided to stay at the hostel next door because it looked more fun and was cheaper. 

So we checked in and got a whole dorm room to ourselves! Result!

We headed upstairs for happy hour – we each got a free beer (well I exchanged mine for a Sprite). 

We sat and enjoyed the rooftop bar and soaked up the nice atmosphere before deciding it was definitely time for dinner. 

We were too tired to go far so we went to a restaurant across the street. They had asias got talent playing on a big screen and we all had a good giggle. 

After dinner we were pretty shattered so we went straight to bed. 

The aircon was bloody freezing and none of us slept too well on the brink of hypothermia.