Driving in Hanoi is an adventure. The drivers use their horns constantly, not out of road rage, but they use they as a type of announcement to the other drivers and passengers - kind of like a "hey y'all, I'm coming!". It takes so getting use to and my blood pressure is normally a bit higher post driving. Picture the 15 of us on a full sized bus driving around with 1000s of motobikes and a few cars - as my teacher put it "those motorbikes are like gnats" and they need to watch out for us. We just plunge ahead into the traffic because we are the biggest and we can. What a riot!
Seriously the food in Hanoi rocks. Bun Cha (slaughtering that I am sure) is some noodle pork dish that rocks (and I don't really eat pork). Pho is a breakfast noodle soup thing that is pretty stellar and Iwill be having a bowl in about 5 minutes when I must leave for breakfast.
Last night we had the alumni dinner at a place called Highway 4 that makes there own rice wine. Well, rice wine is flavored, a tid bit I didn't previously know, and pretty alcoholic - made for a fun evening of people not being aware of how much they were drinking. We had a passion fruit flavored one (probably my favorite), a pulm, an aprocot, and I believe apple. I enjoyed the experience. We went to a lunch place yesterday that was not in any guide book to say the least. It was tiny and some local people working at a hostel pointed us towards it - you had no menu and when you sat down they just brought you Bun Cha and you ate it. It was awesome.
Sights seen in Hanoi so far: the ballet at the opera house (modern, Asian, and really neat), water puppets (pretty damn awesome!), Temple of Literature, the Prison, and Ho Chi Minh Masoleum (a word I need to learn to spell). The HCM masoleum was awesome. You had to leave your camera, walk in pairs on a specified path. You could only go inside in groups lead by a socialist guards in a white uniform and they you were marched around the tomb and stared at the embalmed body in a highly air conditioned room. It was creapy, HCM looked like he could just sit up and chat. Hard to believe he'd been dead so long! Outside the masoleum we saw the One Pillar Pagoda (pagoda is the word for like temple) and that was pretty and the pond surrounding it was filled with lily pads.
Today we are off to Hai Phong which is an industrial coastal city. Should be interesting.
Oh, the green tea here is very bitter - nothing like Chinese green tea. Word to the wise who are future Asia travelers. I mean I like it, but it isn't what you expect. We have been driving through the tea and rice regions and lining the road are farmers in the wicker Vietnames hats picking tea leaves and rice. It is so beautiful. Oh, good beer here is the Saigon beer. It is awesome.
Alright, time for my breakfast of spicy noodle soup.
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