We Swoop on in to Nam! OK, Maybe not "swoop", but it sounds cool!

We left Lak Sao in Laos, and caught a mini bus towards the coast of Vinh, Vietnam.... not even mentioned in our shoestring guide to SE Asia! The entire city was destroyed in the war with French in the 50's/60's, then rebuilt, and then it was completely destroyed again in the war with the US, as it was apparently the starting point of the "Ho Chi Minh trail." Literally only two buildings were left standing, and we didnt get to see them. Our bus dropped us off, and we managed to stay in a slightly sleazy but very cheap room just blocks away. We nearly payed 15 bucks a night, but found a room with AC, cable(with tons of english channels, OMG, YESSSS!!!!), and bars on the window for 7 dollars a night! It was so nice(and cheap), we decided to veg out for a day and just relax and not travel, after having spent 2 straight days on the road.
There is nothing to do of note in Vinh, even after consulting google, so we just walked around and tried some random Vietnamese food, which is awesome. We got super lost, i sweated my shirt in to a swimming pool and we saw some interesting, "soviet style architecture." With wide streets, concrete buildings and a billion scooter parts stores, Vinh doesn't have too much going for it, but it was way better than people on the thorntree LP forum make it sound, and people were very friendly and nice to us. People online describe the Vinh posse as "hostile", but they seemed very friendly to us, and more just curious and excited about some actual foreigners making fools of themselves in their front yards.
After a day and a half we left our AC igloo of a room, and decided to splurge on a Super Nice leather bed bus to Hanoi. There was minubuses going on the 6 hour ride for 5 bucks, but they are prone to stopping at every last place to pick people up, deliver mail, drop off 100 cases of heineken(seriously), and fill up every last crevice on the bus with people... and that could have easily turned our 6 hour ride in to 3 week "oregon trail" like adventure. So, the 8 dollar VIP bus still went ultra slow on the 2 lane(1 on each side) road that goes North to South up the coast of Vietnam. I somehow imagined a faster system of roads since Vietnam has such an obvious one way up and down the coast route, but I was very wrong. Our bus gladly turned the 2 lane road in to a 3 lane road, driving down the center of the road, forcing every other vehicle left or right, but it still seemed like we went 30mph the whole way, which we basically did!
We got dropped off 10km outside of Hanoi, and I was so pissed I nearly killed our bus crew when I demanded a refund for our "expensive" tickets, and they laughed at me! the taxi ride in to town was looking to cost more than our 6 hour AC and leather seat bus ride! Finally, with Jin's cool headedness, we hopped a city bus in to town! I think we may be the only non Vietnamese people to ever take a Hanoi city bus, but it was surprisingly simple, and we found our way withing a km of our hostel!!!! Jin made some friends on the bus (as usual) and they said they'd help point us in the right direction towards our hostel when we got to our stop. Instead, when we got off, at 8pm, they called over a motor scooter taxi and tried to get me and Jin to ride backseat on a tiny motorscooter with 100lbs of luggage! Yeah Right! Plus, that isnt really our style when we can easily walk. They were in shock and told us to hold our bags very tight and looked at us like we were insane! But, after just 20 mins of wandering around, and only asking once for directions, we made it to our hostel!
We actually got sent to another hotel cause our hostel bumped us, but either way, we survived our first night in Hanoi(although I'm still a little upset after specifically choosing our fun hostel online, then getting sent to some ultra boring hotel upon arrival.)