Uber cool hostel - Hanoi - Day 4

I take a flight to Hanoi from Saigon and reach at 7am and ta da - my airport pick up has not arrived yet. I should really learn my lesson that things don't always go as per plan...rather nothing ever goes as planned when overseas. Half an hour later, still no sign and I am on the brink of crying...no not really. I just want to smack them when I see them. I then get on my taxi to my hostel. O-M-G. The hanoi backpackers hostel is the mother of all backpacker hostels. (Maybe there other cool hostels around the world, but for the unseasoned traveler that I am, I've never seen anything like this before). I walk in and it looks like I've walked in to Facebook's head office - its so funky and all cool people are hanging around. Oh god I am starting to feel uncool already. I do all check in formalities and head to my 10 bed dorm room.  I meet & greet my roomie who is from England and then the receptionist enters our room looking for Sara. Now, we don't know who Sara is but by then another roomie enters and says Sara is out. The receptionist leaves and asks us to tell Sara to meet them at the reception. Apparantly, the roomie says, the night before there was someone topless in the room. She rubbed her eyes again to see if it was a girl and turns out Sara was with a guy last night...and she then says casually, "Oh, its pretty common here. I don't think she is in trouble because of that". WHAT! Ummm where the F&*% am I!

I head to shower get ready and my new English roomie asks if I want to join her in going around the city. I happily join - we meet two other swiss girls and a german guy. We head out and take a break to
eat something. Everyone is casually chatting and sharing their travel experiences -
The german guy goes "zis one time when I was in Turkey I did bla bla bla",
The swiss girls" des one time when I was in South America, I......."
Another one "this one time when I was in (insert some cool place) I did (insert some cool thing). Faaaaar out! These guys are only my age and have traveled most of the world already!

Now its my turn. All I have to tell them is "This one time when I was at home sitting and watching Oprah, I burnt my 2 minute noodles in the microwave" Is that a cool story? Do I fit in? Oh god I m so uncool :(

We walk through the streets take pics, talk..the usual. I am not liking Hanoi - it just does'nt have the same vibe as Saigon. And the people in Saigon, Oh, they were super friendly and kept telling I look pretty - (O.K they were all trying to sell me something)  Yeah I am gullible :(

Dog Meat maybe???

Roof Top bar - literally!

We come back to the hostel and its Happy Hour! and the craziness begins. I m busy booking tickets for rest of the trip and doing a bunch of other ad hoc admin stuff to organize my trip while others are busy getting wasted. Its too noisy and we have to wake up early tomorrow for our halong bay cruise so we go to bed.