HANOI THE THIRD

Arriving back in Hanoi at 6pm, Will’s already twitching to get to the rugby, even though it doesn’t start for 6 hours. We get the kids back to the Paradise Hotel and Will scuttles off to Finnegan’s Irish Bar. It must have been a very long match with hours of extra time since he doesn’t stagger in until 5.30am, just as I’m getting up to deal with a sick Harley who’s been sleeping in with me. I’ve seen Will very drunk, I’ve been very drunk, but woah, I ain’t seen nothing yet!! I manage to get him undressed and streer him into (Harley’s single) bed but he’s somehow falling out of the top, bottom and sides. An hour later, I manage to drag him into the double bed where he sleeps for the next couple of hours. The kids can’t stop laughing at the snoring and keep looking at each other, then me, in total amazement before cracking up again. It’s about 8am when he tries to climb out of our third floor window whilst looking for the toilet. The hotel has just been upgraded from a 2 to a 3 star and it seems the staff are going all out to get a fourth one. They can’t be more helpful, but I’m pretty sure that babysitting drunken adults is not on their list of services so we sit it out for a while.

By about 10am, I figure it’s safe to leave him alone and I take the kids out, leaving him a note of where to meet us for lunch at 1pm, should 7 ½ hours sleep be sufficient. Of course, he’s a no-show and Ruby keeps asking me what’s wrong with daddy. I’ve managed to fob her off with the semi-truth that he’s very tired, but she’s looking at me suspiciously. We return to the room at 2.30pm to find a sleepy but considerably more sober Will who’s full of hilarious stories about last night, but we both agree that you probably had to be there….let’s see what next Saturday’s final brings.

We’re off to Hué in the morning and the hotel have given us a free taxi ride to the airport. The driver spends the entire journey blasting his horn at anything that is 20 feet or less away from him. We pull up at the airport and he turns to Will and demands “You give me tip”. “Yeah” says Will, “I’ll give you a tip. Stop bloody tooting your horn, you’ve given me a headache”.

Our bags weight just under 60kg, which is the total allowance for internal flights through Asia but we’re also carrying a day pack each and we have an additional wheelie-bag full of reading, writing and school books which we usually take onboard with us since we know it tips us over the limit. It’s all a bit hectic at check-in and our bags get checked through two different lines, so we take to chance and check in our book bag. 16 kilos! Of books! That’s more than my entire wardrobe for a year, toiletries, I-pod and speaker, handbags…Cider House Rules is going to have to go.