Days 74-75 Friday-Saturday January 22-23 Hanoi, Vietnam

We didn’t spend much time in Hanoi since we’ll be back up here with my (our) parents in a few weeks.  Yet while we were in the city, we quickly got to know its layout, and were able to confirm many of the stereotypes that preceded it, the first of which was that this place is busy!

We finally made it to Vietnam!  Tania on the cusp of Lake Ho Tai.

And damn these people love to honk their horns!  Whether its to inform unfortunate people that happen to be approaching the same intersection, or to tell one of the infinite number of scooters to get out of the way, horns are honked and honked and honked.  And with such narrow streets as those in the old quarter, that makes for a loud and clustered environment.  Crossing the street is a talent, too, one that every person better learn if they’re going to survive in the big city.

I called the whole thing annoying.  Tania then coined the epic term “Hanoi-ing”.  Similar to when the entire city of Shanghai was under construction for the 2010 world expo and we coined that getting “Shanghai’d”, being Hanoi-ing is a term we’ll carry with us well back into the US.  Either way, at first glance, the street scene in Hanoi seems chaotic, but after giving it a few minutes, you’ll notice that (as Vanessa so wisely put it) the whole thing is organized chaos.  To the untrained eye, it’s chaos.  But to those that are familiar with it, it flows as simply and efficiently as possible.  Therefore, organized chaos. 

Friday night we got to our hotel late and walked down the street for some authentic Pho.  We had read that in Vietnam, a restaurant’s appearance oppositely reflects the quality of the food, so we picked the dungiest looking joint that was still open at 9pm.  And boy was the pho delicious.  Such a simple dish that warms the soul like a good chicken soup.  So comforting that  we headed back to call it an early night.

On Saturday, we walked through the sporadic rain over to Lake Ho Tay (HOO WAT?  HO TAY!) and browsed through several wats, stopping for a delicious lunch at a spot named Vine.  We had delicious comfort food while taking the elegant setting, and while getting to know the manager who also recommended some good restaurants in Hue and Hoi An.  That gave us enough fuel to stomp across the rest of the city through the rain, finally getting us to the train station so we could buy all of our tickets for the upcoming trek through Vietnam before they were sold out due to the madness known as Tet.  Luckily we were well trained in dealing with pushy sales people like those who assaulted us at the train station because without that training, we would have 1) never been able to properly purchase the tickets we needed, and 2) fend off people trying to get a piece of the pie we were buying.  But we did it, and treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the Lonely Planet staple 69 Bar-Restaurant.  Hehe.

Being the old fogies that we now are, we followed dinner with a quick bia hoi (preservative-free beer sold for $.10 on every street corner) amongst all of the other locals and expats sitting on children’s plastic chairs.  Then off to bed.  We had a bus to catch the next day to the Cuc Phuong National Park,

So it was a very quick trip to Hanoi, but it gave us enough of a glimpse of the city to get us very excited to really explore it with the parents in a few weeks.