Travel Day to Hanoi

From 10/18

We woke up at on our own accord (so nice) and had breakfast at our hotel. For the rest of the morning we just relaxed on our porch to read and write. It's always nice to relax before any traveling. 

In the afternoon we headed to the airport to hop on our flight. We found out that we put our entry date at October 19th, not the 18th on our visas. We hadti wait around for about 20-30 minutes while they made some calls. We were really nervous they wouldn't let us into the country until the next day. Luckily, and with some convincing, we were allowed in. 

Our lunch consisted of a lot of snacks because I insisted we get through customs before eating. There are always food places on the other side of customs and security. Well, not this time. 

We got picked up at the airport by a cab set up with our hostel. They recommend this because a lot of cabs will take you to a different hostel and insist that yours is overbooked and this one is better. This is because they get commissioned by the hostels to do this. That's insane. Do they ever actually get paid by the customers? 

The landscape is much flatter than Laos. It's also a lot hazier. 

It's hard to see because this was a car picture, but you can see the buildings get harder and harder to see. Those small buildings were not that far away either. 

Another different thing is the traffic. The horn honking doesn't stop, people seem to drive where they want and as long as they hold their horn down its alright. Needless to say we are not getting a moped here. They also pack entire families onto a single moped. Family of five? You don't need a car or minivan, just get a Vespa. 

If you look carefully you'll see five people. One child in front between the drivers legs, two between the adults, and the two adults. Mind blowing!

Anyways, we got to our hostel and needed food! We started wondering the Old Quarter and went to a place called Highway 4. We got four appetizers: one was a buffalo jerky (much different than gas station beef jerky), another was fermented pork with some lettuce, another was catfish spring rolls, and the last was a pork a veggies dish. The last three were all wraps that we actually wrapped ourselves. The waitress helped us out a bit because she could see we had no idea what we were supposed to do haha. Story of our trip. 

We wandered around one of the markets for a while, but knew if we wanted to buy some stuff we had plenty of days. With a little more planning to do we headed back to the hostel to chill for a bit and plan at least day one. 

There is so much to do here and since we only have three days we have to eliminate some cool stuff. It's hard to pick what to do based solely on reading about it. At any rate, this is an extremely busy city with lots to offer. I'm looking forward to learning more about the Vietnam war from their side of things as well. 

"To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,

To gain all while you give,

To roam the roads of lands remote,

To travel is to live."

- Hans Christian Andersen