Hi from Hanoi

Just a quick note here to say that I arrived safely in Hanoi yesterday evening. Again it is difficult to sum up first impressions. It is a huge city, with a smallish "old quarter" and that's where I am - along with most other tourists. I can already tell that there are scams aplenty, and admit to having been done slightly on the journey from the airport - despite the warnings!
The place is reminiscent of Kathmandu, although somewhat more prosperous. It is certainly a hive of all sorts of activity. It seems that many Hanoi citizens seem to both cook and eat on the pavement - at least on the bits that aren't covered in parked motorbikes.
My hotel is the Asia Queen, but it seems to have about two or three other names too. It is perfectly acceptable. One rather surreal factor last night when I switched on the TV was to see two channels showing reruns of Scottish SPL football games (Celtic vs. ICT and Dundee Utd vs. Motherwell) and on another channel a full orchestral perfomance (oriental orchestra all in black tie etc) playing some kind of classical music, but with a Scottish bagpipe soloist (Amazing Grace and Scotland The Brave). This, I felt, was rather beyond my expectations of a welcome!
I've taken a couple of pictures but can't post them now because of absence of editing software to cut them down a bit.