Hanoi

01/09/08 Monday Day 18 Bad Karma
Got breakfast, packed the bags again and did some haggling with one of the taxi drivers to get us a good price to the airport. Got to airport no problem, checked in no problem, got through immigration, passport control and security no problem. Opened the laptop and searched for free wifi. Success. Free wifi. We had about an hour or so to burn so surfing the net is as good as any! Decided to go for my glasses to see things better. No glasses. Well F that anyway. Left them at the guesthouse. Rang the guesthouse with about 1 hour before departure. Told them around 1pm (flight at 2pm) to give the glasses which they found to a taxi driver and bring them to the airport and I would collect them and pay for it outside the airport. Job sorted I thought. Had no problem in going back outside, considering at this stage I was past security. Waiting until about 1.25pm. Decided to ring them again. Your man thought I was coming to collect it so I told him again to give it to a taxi driver and to get it to the airport. Meanwhile I texted Emer that I was still waiting. Around 1.40pm Emer texted me to say that they were boarding and no sign of my taxi driver yet. Anyways a guy showed up in a motorbike with the glasses so I ran through immigration and security again and got on to the place. Job done.
My bad karma still hadn’t gone away. During the in-flight meal, the attendant accidentally spilled a load of orange (extra stickyness) on top of me, drowning the side of my t-shirt and shorts. Not good at all.
Got to the airport anyway and met our driver who the hotel organised for it. It’s a good idea because the hotel is about 20 kilometres from the airport. The driving of the people here can only be described as mental. There’s about a million motorbikes all whizzing all over the place. There’s no rules at all. Intersections are brutal. You just close the eyes and go for it. I’m surprised we didn’t get killed or else kill someone on the way to our hotel.
Our hotel is savage. Small but the rooms are amazing and it’s got free internet too so sorted again!

Gave a small walk around the city to find a pizza restaurant. Very busy place indeed. Traffic is mental again. There’s loads of lights around the town making it a tinny bit tacky!

02/09/08 Tuesday Day 19
Today is Vietnam’s national holiday. And that means that the folks with the bongo drums were out practicing this morning at around half 6. This hotel room isn’t very sound proof at all. Then it was the turn of the bang people to start practicing. And then not to be left out, the kango hammer man decided to have a go. Another band then decided to test out the sound on the stage so now (7.50am) they’re all going at the same time.
Did a lot of walking today. Walked around the lake in the middle of the city. Traffic is mental again. Even more annoying are the motorbike taxis and the peddle taxis asking for your business. At this stage I just shake my head and keep going. And they all shout YooHoo too! Because of the national holiday a lot of things were closed. St. Josephs cathedral when we went there in the evening was closed, so too was the 3 story market. We’ll probably go there tomorrow.
Went to a restaurant close to our hotel for dinner. We thought there was people already eating upstairs but when we went up it was the staff that were sitting upstairs. The place was deserted. They really pushed the wine menu on us and of course the one that we picked they didn’t have. Instead they suggest a bottle of red. It was like drinking a bottle of red liquid sherbet, awful sweet. I got the roast duck. Out of the 10 pieces of duck, I’d say 2 of them were actual duck meat, the rest was lumps of fat, which some were consumed by mistake. Emer got the sweet and sour chicken stir fry. Again the actually pieces of chicken you could eat was tiny. It even included a beak, well the piece was in the shape of a beak.. Floored the wine as fast as we could and then got the hell out of there. On leaving they said, don’t forgot the call back. I think I might.

03/09/08 Wednesday Day 20
Didn’t do much again today. Went to the bus station to get our train tickets to Hai Phong tomorrow morning and also our ticket to Hue next Sunday night. Just did loads of walking around again. Ate dinner in a French style restaurant. Got lovely creamy mashed potatoes there and some proper duck unlike the shite I got the night before. The huge amount of gravy did overpower the taste of the duck slightly!

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