Hanoi

We arrived in Hanoi in the early evening feeling still slightly hung over and rather tired.  We met a Dutch couple, Raul and Charlotte in the taxi queue who fortunately were going to exactly the same Hotel as us.  They’d been to Hanoi before just one week past, they’d been in central Vietnam which was still suffering from flooding and decided to escape and fly to Laos.  The airport in Hanoi is very far away from the city so it was good to be able to split the bill by four, and they knew how much it should cost which was handy when the taxi driver inevitably tried to rip us off at the end of the journey.

We arrived at our Hotel of choice to find that it was fully booked.  We found another one without too much hassle, the owner was rather funny and charming in a cheeky kind of way.  As we were in a group we managed to get a discount which clinched the deal.  We then decided to go out for dinner with our new found Dutch friends.  

They were good crack and Raul happened to work for Thales, the same company I had worked for when I first graduated from University.  Although being exhausted from our big night out the previous night, and from hanging around at the airport for hours, after a few beers we perked up a bit.  We ended up staying up quite late trading travelling tales and sharing information about our native countries.

Hanoi is one fast paced city.  It has a population of nearly 4 million and has 2 million motorbikes.  By far the most common mode of transport is the scooter, and trying to cross the road can seem like a suicide mission at times.  Myself and Nev walked to the train station in the morning to try and book our train ticket from Hanoi to Hue.  We had to venture down small back streets with motorbikes whizzing by at break neck speeds, constantly beeping their horns.  It was frantic and very noisy, I wish I’d worn my earplugs.  We got to the train station to find it was closed until 2pm, so we returned to our Hotel empty handed.  We then spoke to the guy on the front desk about train tickets, he said that he could do it all for us.  The commission was minimal so we went for it.  We also booked our trip to Halong Bay for the next day.

 

We had some good street food for lunch after which I decided to return to our Hotel.  I needed to relax after our hectic morning, and was still feeling pretty tired from the last two nights of boozing. 

I’d been to Vietnam before and the culinary experience was fantastic.  My previous visit was with work, I’d been on expenses and money wasn’t an issue, but I still remember the upmarket restaurant food was still fairly cheap.  As Vietnam had previously been a French colony, there was a great fusion of Franco-Vietnamese food, and some good, cheap Vietnamese wine available, especially in the North where it was cooler. 

With these particulars, I managed to persuade Nev to go for a restaurant recommended by the lonely planet. The décor was great, it had an old colonial feel with dark wooden furniture and a moody candlelit ambience.  It was very busy, we managed to get seats in a prime viewing position on the balcony, where we watched the waiters and waitress’ run around placing orders and carrying food and drinks.  The experience was pretty cool, and the food was amazing.  

Busy Hanoi

We moved on to have a couple of night caps in a nearby bar.  We then went back to our Hotel and got a fairly early night as we were to be picked up at the crack of dawn the next day for our Halong Bay tour.