When I got back to Hanoi, I realised I had no idea how to find the hotel that I'd first arrived at a few days before. I'd reserved a room for my return, but my first visit had been so fleeting I forgot to take a card from the front desk.

I wandered around the main tourist area of central Hanoi rather optimistically hoping I'd recognise the hotel, which of course I didn't. To be honest I often don't recognise the front door of my own flat at home.

Worried that I might have trouble finding a room so close to the Tet New Year festival (starting that night) I checked into the first place that had a spare room. It was pretty grotty and a bit of a firetrap – located as it was at the top of about seven flights of stairs with each flight more narrow and homemade-looking than the last – but was dead cheap at five dollars a night and had a great view over the rooftops of Hanoi:

I spent some some gazing out of the window, soaking up the view, before being distracted by an old woman on a lower roof who was crouching down and apparently washing some sort of a pot.

As I looked closer it occurred to me that she probably lived up there on that roof – there seemed to be some kind of canopy under which she could sleep and a few belongings piled in one corner.

As I surveyed this slightly sad little scene, and the woman continued to crouch and wash the same small pot, it seemed to me that there was something slightly peculiar about her pot-washing technique. And then it dawned on me that she wasn't washing the pot – she was using the water in the pot to wash herself.

So I'd just spent the best part of ten minutes watching an old Vietnamese woman wash her fanny.

I still thank any number of gods on a daily basis that not once did she look up and see me. Particularly at the point where I got my camera out to take the picture above...