Months of practice walking around Asian cities have prepared us well for Hanoi’s vaunted traffic. It’s the sheer number of motorcycles here that make crossing streets hair-raising, combined with the lack of street lights (and ignoring them when they do exist). Six motorcycles can cram themselves into the space that a single car would take up, somehow arranging handlebars, legs, and any luggage into a configuration any puzzle designer would be proud to dream up. The key is to keep on walking, slow and steady, through the stream of traffic and let them figure out how to negotiate around you. Once you get used to it and learn to trust the drivers, it’s not too bad. As I said, we’ve gotten lots of practice with this kind of thing by now.
Our camera is totally dead. The motherboard is toast, same price to replace it as to replace the entire phone. And the prices on new cameras here are pretty bad, so we’ll wait till Hong Kong to buy a new one, assuming prices are better there. It was a great camera and we actually remembered to take pictures with it, of which we are tremendously proud. We were both half expecting to get back from the trip with 10 photos from LAX airport that we snapped on our way home… In any case, we have some photos of Hanoi from a friend we met in Hue located here, but no more photos for now. Thanks Garth!
We spent a lot of time walking around the old quarter of Hanoi, with each of its small streets largely devoted to a single trade (toys, clothing, repairs, bags, etc). We also walked around the beautiful Hoan Kien Lake and out the Huc Bridge to Jade Island and through parts of the French Quarter. And of course, I had to stop and sample all the local varieties of Bia Hoi, “fresh beer”, which can be a very time consuming activity given how many there are! Luckily it’s not a very expensive past time – each glass costs between ten and thirty cents, and it gives you a good excuse to sample all the different local foods as well. Overall a great way to see a city, although it requires strong knees and a good back, since the chairs at most of the shops are less than a foot tall, the small plastic things normally reserved for kindergarteners. I worried about crushing each one as I sat down, mostly a flashback to an embarrassing incident back in Lennox Head near the start of the trip.
I was treated to a wonderful dinner by Lan and Nga, the real-parents of another of my parent’s host-students, Ngoc. They took me to the famous Cha Ca La Vong, serving a single dish for over a hundred years, the eponymous Cha Ca, fried fish. It’s a small restaurant, clearly popular with tourists (apparently it got a spot in 1000 Places to See Before You Die), but also still a favorite of the locals as well. They bring out a frying pan with a fish frying in it to the table, place it on a charcoal brazier, and let you add your own condiments and serve it up. It was great to have locals with me to explain the intricacies of eating the dish, as well as to tell me all about Hanoi. They were wonderful hosts and I had a fabulous time, although unfortunately Mary was again not feeling great and was unable to join us.
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