No Crepes Today

To Hanoi, Vietnam

Yet another country to add to the tally today. After the relaxed and quiet atmosphere of Laos, we were expecting a change in Hanoi. That was indeed the case, however, India has prepared us well, so we easily took it in stride.

It was not the best day for Dex. We had gone to bed last night with the idea of searching out crepes for breakfast, which we’ve seen being prepared at various roadside carts in town. We attentively watched last night while a woman fried up a banana chocolate one at the market, but our tummies we’re, sadly, too full to indulge.

This morning, we took a lengthy stroll through the narrow morning food market, filled with all sorts of colorful and unusual items; it's not everyday you find pigs feet (legs attached), tubs of frogs, and roasted rats for sale. However, we failed to find a crepe vendor.

Dragon Fruit

Pigs feet (with legs) in background

Toads anyone?

Upon arriving back at the guesthouse, we found the nearby crepe stand completely unmanned (really, “unwomanned”), and the other purported crepe seller, just up the road, was nowhere to be found. Giving in to hunger, we selected a tidy tourist cafe near the temple hill for brunch. I'm not sure where Dex gets his stubbornness (Meg?), but he refused to select from among all the non-crepe items on the fairly extensive menu, which only intensified his hunger and sour mood for the rest of the day. It wasn't until 3PM, already checked in for our late afternoon flight, that he gave in to eggs and bacon at the small airport cafe. Whew. The rest of the day was thankfully much less stressful.

Hungry and grumpy

It was already dark when we landed in Hanoi. The thick haze reminded us immediately of India, though Vietnam is clearly a much more modern country -- wide, smooth freeways, well lit streets, sidewalks, traffic lights etc, etc. Getting through the airport, both in Laos and here, was a veritable snap and made for a pleasant and relaxed introduction. In an hour, we got our passports stamped, picked up our backpacks, swapped out our SIM cards, and pulled out 4,000,000 dong at the ATM. (We all think it would be more fun if the dong were used in Hong Kong -- “Eh hem, that will be a million Hong Kong Dong please!”)

Our hotel for the night, the Rendezvous Boutique Hotel, was located in the old city, where the cars, mopeds and throngs of Saturday night pedestrians easily clog up the one lane alleyways. It was fun to search out a place to eat. Although, once the space between people dropped to zero on the increasingly narrow walking street, we reversed course and swam upstream to find a place to eat. The sides of the street were filled with low tables and tiny plastic chairs where Saturday night revelers were eating tasty finger food and drinking beer. At one point, while stuck in the crowd near a bandstand, one group of happy eaters offered us some tasty little fried somethings on a skewer, which we happily accepted.

Despite just arriving, I frantically booked bus tickets for the morning to the Halong Bay island of Cat Ba, anxious to leave the crowds and maximize our time out in the more scenic areas. To Kylie's dismay, this would require a 5:45 a.m. wake up call. Sigh, the life of a world traveler. Welcome to Vietnam.