No golden arches...anywhere!!

We went on a motorbike tour of hui yesterday, oh - my - god! Remember what i said about the motorbikes and the buses? There are no apparent road rules that i can discern over here, it seems to be a simple hierarchy: trucks and buses rule the road honking their horns to everyone else to make them move or die, then come motorbikes who weave in and out of the road like on them computer games where you have to knock people over and stuff, then come the cyclists, who are the bottom of the ladder, if they don't move over when they hear a honking that's it for them. Crossing the road is an experience itself in vietnam, we were told to just look confident and walk really fast not stopping for no one. Ok, first 2 days we just went miles out of our way to avoid playing froggy on these highways of death, then we get more confident and cross, looking both ways and jumping back if there's owt going too fast to stop. Now I practically walk across with me eyes closed, which does work, they do stop... in the end.
But these motorcyclists today were mentalists! There were about 12 of us, mostly english, sat on the back of a motorbike each, on a tour of hui's pagoda's and citadels, no helmets or nuffink! (they don't need them over here cos they're dead 'ard). One bridge we went over was straight from the italian job, JUST big enough for a motor bike, i felt sorry for the poor cow infront of me, my driver was a maniac and was practically giving this poor girl on a cycle bike wheel burns to get her to hurry up. Although my driver was particularly mental, he insisted on racing to the front of the line at every opportunity like it was some kinda race, and driving through a market, well, i was embarressed: he was just growling at people (mostly old ladies carrying extremely heavy looking baskets on their heads 'oy!' to move them, there's me sat on the back trying to look apologetically at the people he's insulting and nearly running over.)

Just got to hanoi, capital of vietnam (i think) The bus journey was just 12 hours of awful hell, bus was packed, i ended up getting so frustrated i laid in the aisle on the manky floor just to stretch my legs out for an hour! We haven't done much today, tried the local cuisine tho clare, tres nice indeed, cau lau i think it was called? Although I must admit this isn't for want of looking desperately out the bus window through the city for the golden arches. I haven't seen ronald ONCE since i've been in cambodia or vietnam... it'll be nice to get back to bangkok and civilization...