Hanoi is a city of 6m people. And 4.5m motorbikes. The motorbike is therefore king of the road, and you take your life in your hands every time you cross the street – although fortunately drivers seem pretty adept at missing pedestrians! As a result, the city is noisy and bustling all day – and all night – long.

This is also a city which has a definite street culture. Makeshift cafes crowd every corner, with packs of locals sitting on plastic stools drinking bia hoi (James takes a child-like joy in the fact that the word for beer sounds like 'Beer Ahoy!'). Traders sell their wares from overladen yokes and bicycles, everything from fruit to plastic containers on sale. We also saw a fair few pavement restaurants selling the ubiquitous pho (noodles) and, bizarrely, what looked to be sausages and chips – seems to be a favourite amongst the locals, although we're not quite sure how the dish has made its way into traditional Vietnamese cuisine!

Continuing the tradition of 'weird traditional entertainments we have seen', on our first night we caught a water puppet show – essentially, Punch and Judy in a paddling pool. The tradition grew up on the paddy fields of northern Vietnam, and the whole thing was surprisingly funny and entertaining, lots of slapstick humour and short, fast-paced sketches. The puppets are all operated from behind the scenes by people standing waist deep in water. As part of the performance, we got a chance to enjoy Vietnamese music provided by the accompanying band, including the Dan Bau, an instrument with one-string that's so thin it looks like they're playing thin air. It has a beautiful, almost haunting sound.

We visited some of the local temples although I think we've been a little bit spoilt by the delights of Japan and China – though good, the Vietnamese offerings don't quite match up. The Ho Loa prison (nicknamed Hanoi Hilton by the American POWs held there during the war) was interesting as an exercise in propaganda. It focuses on the awful treatment of Vietnamese communist prisoners by the French, all accompanied by ominous dum-dum-dum-da-dum scary-music. By contrast, it looks like the American POWs were held in some kind of Butlins-esque holiday camp – lots of photos of them making Christmas decorations and playing sports with big (forced?) grins on their faces. Veterans' accounts of the torture they endured here are (unsurprisingly) nowhere to be seen....

We were also in Hanoi for 30th April, Liberation day, marking 35 years since the country was united under communist rule. The celebrations centred around Hoan Kiem Lake, where most of the population (and their motorbikes) congregated. We saw one of the best (and certainly the biggest) fireworks displays either of us has ever been to, made even better by the crowd – you have never heard a reaction like it, gasps and cheers as almost every firework exploded. It was also quite a hairy experience as the fireworks explode a lot nearer the ground than at home: a few cardboard remnants of rockets and a fair number of sparks landed near us, fortunately with no injury caused to the crowd. The second the display finished, EVERYONE decided it was time to head for home, and a motorbike traffic jam built up within about 30 seconds, the sound of horns beeping coming from every direction. It's a fitting end to our sojourn in Hanoi.