Hanoi

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Honk Honk

A tuk tuk from Green Climbers home brought us to the bus station where we waited for awhile to catch the international Lao-Thai bus. The bus brought us to the border to the friendship bridge where we got out and checked out of Lao and into Thailand. Once getting through the border with ease we headed to the airport. Opps....six hours early for our flight. We thought it would take much longer to make it from the climbers home to the airport but in fact it only took about 2 hours. So we sat around and waited patiently to head up to Bangkok for our connecting flight to Hanoi.

The view from our hostel

We landed in Bangkok around 11pm and headed to a bench to sleep on for our 7 hour lay over. We finally made it through all the lines and to our gate. (We waited in a ticket line, then a passport check line and finally the security line: totaling around 2.5 hours of lines) 

We finally made it to Vietnam! Once the plane landed we headed into the airport to start the visa process and immigration check. Before arriving we had to apply for the visa and get an approval letter. We presented this to the visa desk and handed over our passports. A few minute wait and a 25 dollar fee for both we had our entry into the country. 

Thanks to a pre booked hostel we had a man with a sign with our names on it waiting for us as we walked out of the airport. A wild 30 minute ride from the airport and through the city of Hanoi ended with us in the busy old quarter. We were located in the heart of chaos. Full of motor bikes and people selling everything from fresh chopped meats to dried fruits. Our hostel was quite nice, focused on young travels looking for a good time. They offered free beer between 7-8 and specials every night in the bar upstairs on the roof top. The view from the top was amazing, a 360 degree of all of Hanoi.

ZOOM ZOOM!

A colorful city

We spent a few days in Hanoi walking about the city streets exploring what it had to offer. We visited a prison museum and war museum. We also cruised around lakes, botanical gardens and temples. Robyn bought a kilo of dried ginger for $4 (worth every penny). We learned quickly that you should never stop moving or make eye contact with anyone selling something in the city.  If you do you will be surrounded by 3 women selling doughnuts, forcing bags into your hands to buy. The streets were loaded with fresh fish, too. Huge catfish were often on display, freshly cut in half.  There were buckets of crab and snails for sale on the street. We saw motor bikes with three halves of pig piled on the drivers lap zooming by. The traffic was the craziest part. There was never a break in the traffic to cross the street. Instead, you had to just walk out into traffic and the bikes would dodge you! Robyn usually did this while saying "Oh God, Oh God" and putting Austin in the line of traffic first. The city was overwhelming but beautiful. The buildings were tall yet skinny and full of color. It was easy to walk to all the museums and attractions with plenty of cool sights along the way. The streets themselves were very clean compared to cities we were in prior.  Constantly people were walking around wheeling giant barrels sweeping up any trash they could find.

Chaos everywher

We even found a brewery, well at least we think. When we walked in they automatically gave us a beer to drink and as we sat down and looked around we noticed a huge brew room attached to the cafe. When it came time to order we had to take our chances and just point to something. We ended up with a tasty chicken soup. A beer and soup for two only cost 53 dong ( just over 2 USD) After a few days, we bought a trip to Sapa in Northern Vietnam to do a three day trek through the mountain villages. Tune in next time for that adventure...