Alas, poor Mike! Not only did we not go to the chocolate buffet, we passed it up in favour of a water puppet performance, which I suspect he felt rather added insult to injury. Water puppetry is a Vietnamese performance art which dates back to the 11th Century. Originally performed in flooded paddy fields, it's now usually played out on a specially constructed stage like this one  - the puppets themselves bob about on floats on the water's surface, while the performers stand thigh-deep in water behind the backdrop, using a series of bamboo rods to manipulate their charges. Apparently "water-borne diseases, rheumtism and leeches" used to be all in a day's work, and the pupeteers would sustain themselves by drinking fish sauce. (The internet wouldn't mislead me on this, surely?)

The performance comprised eleven short skits: some were excellent, some were decidedly unimpressive, and some consisted solely of Vietnamese spoken word and were therefore slightly beyond our two-word vocabulary. Mike fell asleep about ten minutes in, which was much appreciated by the audience members sitting behind him on the only modestly raked seating.

A puppet about to brave fire! Several actually cuahgt light, which I don't think was part of the script.

Off-duty puppets

Having earned our cultural stripes, we returned to the hotel to find that the in-house laundary service had worked miracles on Mike's wardrobe. Given the meticulous level of service here, I wouldn't put it past them to have deemed the original shirts to be in a condition too shameful to preserve, and hunted down - or indeed hastily manufactured - exact replicas.

Who are you and what have you done with Mike's clothes?

When we next ventured out it was with growling stomachs and a determination to track down some street food, so we headed straight for the Old Quarter. Living space is in such short supply in Hanoi that people's lives spill out onto the streets, and alley after alley is lined with families cooking and eating their own meals as well as slightly larger-scale culinary operations catering for outsiders. Everyone sits on plastic stools incredibly low to the ground - a foot high, if that - and helps themselves to chopsticks from pots in the middle of the tables, then orders at random. (Ok, the ordering at random might just have been us. We also - by luck rather than intelligent menu navigation - seemed to be more or less the only people not tucking into various parts of frog.) Pleasantly sated, we changed tack quite dramatically by heading up to a swish roof-top bar - called, somewhat incongruously, Avalon - where desperately hip Hanoians rubbed shoulders with children's birthday parties. I can't help feeling that's one up on a McDonald's party.

Today we bid a distressing farewell to our hotel, then had a wander round the National Museum of Vietnamese History before settling down for a pavement-side drink and a spot of bride-watching. I also challenged Mike to spot either a) a motorbike driven by a woman with a male passenger, or b) a child passenger on a motorbike wearing a helmet. We're both still on null points.

This is a bit of a visual non-sequitur, but street badminton is another example of work-arounds for lack of space in the city - courts are marked out on the pavements, and players just turn up with their nets and raquets.

To round off the day, we ambled (if  the word "amble" can accommodate dodging multiple lanes of oncoming traffic at regular intervals) over to Ba Dinh Square, which is apparently the holiest place in modern Vietnam. It's here that Ho Chi Minh lies embalmed in state (against his own wishes - he'd repeatedly specified his desire to be cremated, but the Party had other ideas, and began researching preservation options while he was still alive. What it is to have friends). We didn't venture inside - partly because Mike, having been disappointed with Chairman Mao's remains, had lost his youthful faith in embalming - but headed onwards to the imaginatively named West Lake (possibly it's more creative in Vietnamese). Here you can hire a pedalo in the shape of a swan, which might not sound like the most alluring prospect, but is popular with young Hanoians for whom it offers a rare chance for a bit of privacy. Until, that is, a pedalo being over-enthusiastically propelled by two Westerners cheerfully pulls in alongside them. Ah well. Mike also thoughtfully pointed out dead fish as we passed them.

Swans against the smog. Paris, eat your heart out.

We're now just about to tuck into dinner before catching a sleeper train into the mountains. I asked Mike if he could provide a soundbite with which to round off this post, and he came up with "bye". How does he come up with these things, I hear you ask?

Still, I suppose that's the gist of it -  bye!