We left for Vietnam today, and were on our way after a little misunderstanding at the airport. Little meaning our reservation was never confirmed! We had to buy completely new tickets at the airport because our online booking never went through. Nihal shouldn't be trusted to do anything.
After a short 2 hr flight we reached Hanoi, and were greeted by our tour guide Cuong. My dad kept referring to him as ET because he talked exactly like him and repeated everything we said. Really nice guy though. And I thought Hong Kong was hot, Vietnam is HOT. I was in a constant state of a hot, humid, sticky mess. August is NOT the right time to travel Asia.
We stayed at the Quoc Hoa hotel right in the middle of the bustling city. Just a little background of Vietnam. Vietnam has roughly 86 million people, and 80 million of those people own scooters. Hanoi is Vietnam's capital and largest city. So basically scooters run Hanoi. And there are no traffic lights or rules. So you basically have to cross the street like the game Frogger, one step at a time. Because there are literally THOUSANDS of scooters coming right at you, with no intention of slowing down. Ever.
I really like Hanoi because you'll find something different on every street. One street is silk street, where only silk items are sold in these outdoor bazaar style shops. Another street is handicraft street. I think my favorite is toy street, with every toy imaginable for sale. We had dinner at this amazing outdoor buffet style restaurant, and it only came out to $20 total for 3 people. It seems ridiculously cheap, but the average person in Vietnam only makes $8/day. The food was extremely fresh, and I think it was the best crab I've ever tasted. After dinner Cuong told us we had to see international corner. So we walked to this corner, which is four way cross-section, and apparently where all the internationals hang out. There were literally hundreds of internationals and expats just sitting on the corners of this cross-section drinking beer. And no one even looked happy. It seemed like they were all dragged there by their tour guides and were told that's where they had to hang out. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen.
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