We made it! And it only took, well, forever. I think the total air travel time was around 24 hours. Then there was the hour plus wait for our luggage and the taxi ride into Hanoi - amazingly enough our driver was still there after the endless wait AND took us to the right hotel, 2 things I was sure wouldn't happen. Unfortunately our hotel wasn't as patient as the taxi driver. They had given our room away and had no vacancies. So there we were at 1:30 in the morning with no place to stay. Luckily they were able to find us a room just down the road. All things considered it could have been much worse, but after over a day of travelling and the 15 hour time difference it wasn't exactly what we were hoping for. The journey doesn't end there, though. I suppose it would have been smarter to check the train schedule ahead of time, but instead we decided to just show up to the station with our gigantic luggage, and were then stuck there for 5 hours while we waited for our train to get there. While we were waiting I met a girl named Thao who wanted to practice her English with me, so for the next 3 HOURS I learned pretty much everything about her. She was very sweet though and was so happy to talk to me I couldn't find it in me to end the conversation. Although it seemed like it would never happen, our train finally arrived and after just 3 more hours we finally made it to our new home, the "quiet" city of Hai Phong.
