we arrived in hanoi really early in the morning. we were dropped off in the old quarter and were immidiately bombarded as usual with cab drivers.... wait. did i say cab driver? yes. cab drivers. vietnam does not do the tuk tuk thing. one of the major differences between vietnam and the rest of south east asia i noticed is that they seem way more advanced and 'western'. our search for a guest house was futile. they don't do 'guest houses'. they do 'hotels'. luckily, the prices are still reasonable. the place we eventually found, prince hotel had some of the nicest rooms i've ever seen for $20. it also just happened to be across the street from wide eyed tours, run by an australian friend of jessica's. what chance! after settling in and all that we went out for a bit of a walk, checked out a nearby park and shopped for a new camera for sean and jess. oh, i forgot to mention, on the bus ride from hell, they lost their camera. oops. that really sucked. anyways, they bought a far superior camera this day and all was well. the rest of these details in hanoi are probably going to be jumbled, so i'll try my best to convey them in chronological order to the best of my ability. we embarked on a walking tour of the old quarter and noticed that each street was a street of specific professions. example: one street is all tailors, one street is all shoes, one street makes cabinets and mirrors etc etc... this has it's advantages i guess. in canada, if i want one specific thing, sometimes the only 3 places in town you can get this are in 3 different corners. what a pain...
i also saw my first roast dog and tried my best to not let it get to me. couldn't help but think of poor kobe back home. night fell, and i found it amazing how fast they turn the streets in to markets. hanoi is busy, bustling and exciting. it may very well rank as my favourite city in asia. the traffic is crazy, you just have to walk slowly across the street and let the bikes go around you.
we also discovered a junction close to our hotel something called 'bie hoi', which i believe translates to draft beer. this is where i was on easter. bia hoi rings in at a hefty 3000 dong. 1 canadian dollar is about 14,000 dong. basically, we got drunk on less than $2 cdn before a water puppet show at the theatre. what a mistake! it was such a relaxed show and we were all wired. it was interesting and i bought a book about how they do it, but overall it wasn't what i expected. what did i expect? i don't know how to explain that.... but i thought the performance was meh anyways. we also checked out the ho chi minh masoleum. a huge 1 hour line led us into this building where you get to see the enbalmed corpse of their beloved revolutionary leader, ho chi minh, aka uncle ho, aka kernal sanders from kfc. it's bizarre. and they ADORE him in vietnam. which confuses me because keeping his corpse there makes no sense, because uncle ho wanted to be cremated. why don't they carry out his wishes!? after all that we went to the ho chi minh museum. probably the coolest, most modern museum i've seen in asia. maybe... the world? vietnam continues to impress and surprise me.
we also went to see the temple of literature. around this time on my trip i started to get really sick of temples. it's all same same.... but different. it was a really cool temple, but.... you know. more bia hoi... i met a local who was very kind. i bought him a few beers and he gave me a nail clipper/bottle opener in return. what a kind guy!
later, me and landon's room became infested with termites so we had a guy clean the room of them while we went out for dinner. when i got back, there was 2000 baht missing from my money belt. i decided against action because in guest houses and hotels always, they say they are not responsible for anything that goes missing. so are they basically giving themselves the right to steal? i couldn't be sure when that went missing though, but that seemed about right. i only noticed because we were packing up for halong bay the next day. so, when it comes down to what's been stolen from me so far, just a pair of flip flops in sihanoukville and 2000 baht in hanoi.
hanoi is awesome! go there!
next up, i'm covering our 2 day trip to halong bay.
