We're here!

We made it after a very easy couple of flights, on the first leg to Taiwan we each got to stretch out on a row of seats and sleep. After four hours in the Hello Kitty Taipei airport, we flew to Hanoi then got through visa and customs AND got our bags within less than ten minutes! The agency had a driver meet us, so we arrived at the hotel, unpacked and hit the streets.

We're staying in the Old Quarter, a maze of narrow streets filled with motorbikes, bikes, taxis, cyclos and pedestrians. You pretty much have to walk on the street a lot of the time because items from the various shops are spilling onto the sidewalks, and then the rest of the sidewalks are filled with parked motorbikes. Crossing the street is an adventure, though not as hard as I thought. You can't hesitate or wait for the flow of traffic to stop—it won't. So you just start walking, slowly and without hesitation and the traffic will go around you. If you stop or go too quickly that is when you could be in trouble.

Above: A view from the roof of our hotel

There are not really what you'd call restaurants through much of the area, more like people on the sidewalk or in the opening to a small storefront with their cooking gear and maybe a few very short plastic chairs. We couldn't find the one we were looking for, so ended up going into a bia hoi place that had food. Bia hoi is a type of place that serves cheap fresh beer, usually made at the same establishment where you're drinking it. It has no preservatives so it will spoil within a day or two of brewing.

We ate some tasty food there for dinner: fried bean curds with onion and a dipping sauce and noodles with beef and vegetables. Considering that dinners with snake, pigeon, frog, turtle or buffalo were all options on the menu, we didn't go the adventurous route. Beer was not great, it reminded me of bud light, but the food more than made up for it.

Dinner; views of the Old Quarter

It's almost 8 am in Hanoi now, so it's breakfast time, and that means pho! It is considered a breakfast food, so a most pho street vendors close up by lunchtime. Can't wait to find some cafe su da too. Hopefully we can find some ice that is safe to drink without us getting sick.

In Ginger news: tomorrow is the big day!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The agency hasn't given us a specific time yet (they need to confirm with a couple of people first) but probably around 9 am! So today will be pho for breakfast, visiting Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (you can see his body there; I was not really wanting to go but so far two locals have highly recommended that we go visit "Uncle Ho", so it seems like it shouldn't be missed. Eek.), then walking around Hoan Kiem (the lake in the center of Hanoi), and heading over to the fancy part of town, the French Quarter, for dinner. The people are very friendly and helpful, and are happy to help us with our pronunciation of the three words of Vietnamese we no so far. Here's to learning more today!

Above: Pigs on the back of a motorbike--one of our first sights on the way to our hotel from the Hanoi airport