Day 2: Hanoi City Tour

We awoke around 8am to have breakfast.  The breakfast was provided by the hotel and when we went downstairs there was a spread of veggies, spring rolls, cereal, toast, and some other small vietnamese things.  We had our fill and then checked out of the hotel by 10am.

Our travel agency, Vega Travel, was close by and they allowed us to store our luggage at their office because we were heading out for a tour with them at 8pm.

We went upstairs to drop off our bags in a very "secure" room and noticed there was a small washroom.  I think Iwao was the first to use it and he came out laughing after washing his hands.  I guess the sink isn't actually connected to anything so when you turn on the tap, the water flows from the facet, but then just goes through the hole in the bottom of the sink and splashes all over the floor. lol!  best plumbing ever.  I also used the toilet next and when I went to close the door, firstly there was no doorknob and the door wouldn't even close, and secondly, I touched the door nub, the ring of the doorknob fell off onto the ground.  haha best.  (I'd like to finish this by saying that I still would highly recommend Vega Travel to anyone reading this thinking of going to Northern Vietnam.  Everything is done this way and that's just how things work in Vietnam.  We left our luggage in this room many times over the duration of many days and had no security problems).

Ok so we left our bags there and headed back out onto the streets.  This was our first look at Hanoi in the daylight.  WOW so many scooters and people bustling about.  I really felt like I was in the Amazing Race and we really were in another world.  We exchanged some USD into Vietnamese Dong and proceeded to walk along the road for maybe 30 min until we reached the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  Along the way here's a few things we saw that are better described with some pictures!  (pics to come when I get back to Taiwan)

The Mausoleum was... sort of just a bit square looking building.  There was a big grass field with stone paths running through it in front of it, and as we tried crossing it to get closer, we got whistled at from some military people.  I guess we weren't allowed to walk across the field on the stone paths.  The confusing part was that some people would walk across and NOT get in trouble.  Some people were even sitting in the middle of the field eating.  What the heck!  Anyways, we walked all the way around the wrong way, and then back the right way to get to the front.  It wasn't really all that impressive but I guess I'm not sure what I was expecting.

Next we walked around the side of the Mausoleum and saw the One Pillar Pagoda.  It's exactly what it says it is.  Just a 1 story pagoda on a pillar.  Once again not that crazy. 

We were getting hungry and we saw an area labeled "Delicious Area" on the map, so we made our way there with plan to stop by the Literature Temple.  We got to walk through some really local areas selling hardware and household wares.  It was a real eye opener to see these people on the streets all dirty selling stuff from their garage.

We made our way to the Literature Temple but it really didn't look like much so we decided to have lunch at this all-u-can-eat hotpot place.  The place was really busy and we appeared to be the only foreigners.  We sat down at the bar style ledge and started picking food from the conveyor belt.  I was feeling like veggies so probably 75% of my food was different greens.  Our server was very friendly and helpful and she recommended some different places to check out on the map, because we didn't have any plans after lunch.  I shouldn't laugh at this, but her name tag said "Bich Captain"  lol... I TRIED to get a photo but she was moving around too much and the lighting wasn't so great.

Anyways we left the hotpot place ($7 each) and headed around the Literature Temple.  We passed by a part of it that we had not seen that looked interesting, so we went around to the front side and paid 50cents to go in.  It was actually really neat inside.  There were many many of these "doctors slabs" resting on large tortoises backs (all carved in stone).

At the back of the temple grounds was a tourist shop, and a temple with incense. I picked up some small gifts and we checked out the temple and headed out.

We continued towards the delicious area because that was our original idea even though we weren't hungry.  After crossing some gnarly busy streets we made it there.  There were a lot of small little restaurants and small shops with tons of stuff on display for sale.  Very neat to see.  Here's some more pics to paint the picture:

By this time it started to get dark.  We thought it would be nice to walk around the lake in the middle of the city, and then eat diner.  Before we started our walk around the lake we stopped off at Papa Rotti, "The Father of all Buns."  They sold these ... buns that were really tasty (50 cents).  They were sweet and had some sort of really light... almond butter paste inside.  I'm craving one was I type this!  After the Papa Rotti we grabbed another fruit drink from Yummy.  I had a layered drink of Aloe jelly, coconut milk, and mango. SOO good ($1).

It was dark now so we made our way around the lake.  Not much crazy stuff to see but it was definitely a nice walk.  As we crossed the 3/4 mark we noticed some lights coming from a big piazza and it looked to be some sort of talent competition.  We watched a whole bunch of kids dancing to music, and then a boy band singing some song.  It was a nice 20degrees outside and watching and listening to the music was just really... neat.  I love experiencing these sort of cultural events in different cities.

Eating time!  We made our way back to a restaurant that we saw that's situated right on the lake.  We went inside and got great seats on the outside patio facing the lake.  I had the Luc luc pork (pork on top of rice with veggies) which was very tasty and cost $5.

food never looks good with a flash but it was far too dark without it

restaurant patio

We only had an hour or so to kill before heading to Vega Travel for our Sapa tour so we slowly made our way back to the travel agency through a local tourist night market.

We arrived at the agency on the dot at 8pm and it looked like we were the last to arrive.  We quickly grabbed our bags and threw them into the back of the bus that drove us through the bustling streets for 10 minutes to the Hanoi train station.  There, one of the managers gave us our train tickets and explained how things were going to happen.  We would board the train and it would depart at 9pm.  It would arrive in Lao Cai (close to Sapa) and then we'd meet with some of the Vega Travel people on the other side.  It all sounded good so we walked through the station, across the train tracks, and up into the old train.

The rooms were small but relatively clean.  Iwao and I slept in the bottom bunks and Rob slept up top.  This is where we met Sebastian.  He was from Quebec and would be sharing the room with us.  We made our introductions and got to know each other.  Sebastian was on the start of a long 6 month tour he was doing around all of south east asia which sounded really cool!  I believe this was his first time to Asia in general he said he really liked Hanoi.

With the train arriving in Lao Cai at 5:00am we thought it would be best to get some rest early so we turned off the lights and listened to the ricketing of the train tracks as we all fell asleep.