Vietnam Day 5 Power shopping, and heading south

Day 5 started out with me learning a lesson the hard way. The first rule of travel to Hanoi is simple: Wear a nice pair of shoes while walking in the city, or buy yourself a new pair upon arrival. I wore an old pair of shoes that I intended to only be making a one way journey, and was constantly hounded by an army of guys carrying a plastic shoe repair kit with glue. Sometimes if I stood on a curb too long I'd look down and see one of them trying to super glue it while I was standing there. I must have waved off 50 of them in my 2 days spent in the city. So I had decided I'd finally say yes to one, but I shouldn't negotiate and do currency conversion first thing in the morning because I agreed on a $10 dollar shoe repair job for a pair of shoes I'd paid $20 for in China. Lessons Learned (To be fair he did hand stitch them back together pretty nicely, it was my poor negotiation that was the problem). After my shoe error we found W some really lovely dresses at Ngoc Anh Fashion (92A Haing Gai Str. Hanoi) . The lady managed to turn them around quickly enough for W to order them and have them delivered to the hotel same day. We never actually agreed on a time with our travel agent, so there were some nervous moments in the lobby when the car hadn't arrived yet, and then traffic sucked so we got to the airport about 30 minutes before departure and weren't sure they were actually going to let us on our flight. They did and were actually pretty cool about it, but we decided we'd be a little firmer about times with the travel agent for our two remaining airport trips. We flew Vietnam airways, which was mostly underwhelming service/airplane wise, but it was safe and on time, so who's to complain. We arrived in Da nang to warmer and more humid weather, and by more humid I also mean pouring rain. We were staying at the Sandy Beach Non Nuoc Resort which is kind of a long cab ride from everything but really a nice little place to stay. We were picked up at the airport and delivered safely to our hotel, and the driver let us know it was him who'd be picking us back up in the morning. We ate a late dinner at the hotel restaurant which was quite enjoyable, and then went out to the patio bar, which was even more enjoyable. We were the only guests we saw at the hotel that night, and relished in the off season travel glory of it all. No camera use this day, so a short post for day 5.