Hanoi. Oh boy.

Our first day in Vietnam proved most eventful. We arrived in Hanoi in the late afternoon, and after a warm welcome (complete with fresh mango juice) at our hotel in the center of the Old Quarter, we ventered out to explore our surroundings. The phrase "hustle and bustle" does little to describe Hanoi. With the tight (signless, lightless, and lawless) streets that are shared by pedestrians, bikers, motor bikes, cars, busses, and old ladies balancing giant hobo sticks who all think they have the right-of-way, our phrase of choice is, "OHMYGOSH WE'RE GOING TO DIE."

 

The streets here in the Old Quarter are all named after the wares they sell, (I.e. Silk Road, Silver Road, Clear Packing Tape Road, Halloween Candy Road, etc) which is ideal for comparison shopping.

 

We ate dinner at a popular restaurant (with a three word name made up mostly of consonants) where we were surprised to be surrounded by so many children. Thinking we had stumbled into the Vietnamese version of TGIFridays on kids-eat-free night, we were informed by a 10 year-old chap named Simon that it was national Children's Day.

 

See those teeny thimbles of liquid? That, my friends, is Vietnamese sticky rice liquor. When I ordered one glass, our waiter burst into a fit of giggles ("tee tee tee tee!") and when the second round was required 45 seconds later he about lost it. Suddenly nervous that I was consuming some sort of 100% rocket fuel, we asked why he laughed. Turns out, it makes him drunk, and when he's drunk he laughs like this: "tee tee tee tee!" Lucky for us, half an ounce of rice wine has little affect on our American tolerances.

After dinner we hit up a nearby karaoke establishment in an effort to wait out a rainstorm. I'm pretty sure we were the only American customers they've ever had, and I'm positive they were live streaming our renditions of Madonna performances to all of their Facebook friends.

We slept off the rice wine thimbles and sought out the city's best Ban Mi for lunch today. We ate our delicious $1 sandwiches by the lake, wondering every so often what possible meat substances were being consumed. ("Softish meat? Squishy meat! Clear meat?")

 

(Brenna's post-ban mi crumbs)

We did some sightseeing at the Temple of Literature, a college founded in 1070, dedicated to Confucius. That's pretty much all we know about this site, as we were too damn hot to doddle, but we can tell you details about the decorative bonsai tree dioramas as well as the exact location of the toilets.

 

 

To cool off, we took a midday break for cocktails to celebrate Verna's birthday and followed libations with dinner of northern Vietnamese tapas.

 

We shopped at Metal Wearables Street on the way home, and were floored when the hotel staff brought Verna a cake and sang Happy Birthday in our room. That's service!

 

Tomorrow we're going to join the locals for some lakeside tai chi and sidewalk bia hoi before catching the overnight train to Sapa. Adventure never sleeps.