Pho for breakfast!

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Vietnam is a crazy place, well maybe it's just Hanoi! How does a city manage with a population of 3.5 million without any stop lights or sense of road rules??? Maybe it's just my western upbringing that I don't fully see the stuble rules that take place. For instance, crossing the street is a whole new game! Since the flow of traffic is never halted by stop lights, it's tricky to get across. First you wait for a slight opening in the stream of motorbikes and cars and slowly edge out into the street. Once you're in the thick of it, you just keep walking slowly looking both ways and usually the stream of traffic will part around you. Sometimes you get unlucky and have a big car barreling towards you and all you can do is pick up the pace a bit and hope the car will slow down to avoid hitting you. Pedestrians definitely do NOT have the right of way here! Once you're across, you thank your lucky stars for surviving and vow never again to risk your life in such a silly manner. But then there you are again, 10 meters down the road at another impossibly big intersection. This is what life is like here in Hanoi!

After leaving Bali, I flew to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where I had to wait around for a day for my Vietnam Visa to get processed. I walked around the city sightseeing and took refuge in a bird park while the skies dumped buckets. I quitely sipped my pumpkin soup as a Great Hornbill rested in the branches overhead! The next day I flew out of KL to Bangkok where I had a six hour layover before continuing on to Vietnam. I met up with my friend Sven who I met a few years ago while traveling through Australia. It was only logical that since we were in the same part of the world again, we should join forces and travel together. We spent a few days walking around Hanoi going to a few of the major sights.
I really enjoyed walking around the city seeing the vietnamese way of life. The city streets are always packed with motorbikes and the occasional car along with the odd tuck-tuck driver who desperately tries to beckon you over with a wave of his hand. There's heaps of ladies walking the streets with fruit or vegetables piled into big baskets hanging from their shoulders along with the random book/lighter/odd-ball item sellers. I think the most dramatic difference over here is the jam-packed streets! All the shops extend right out over the sidewalk and sometimes even into the streets. I've seen men welding metal right on the sidewalk with the sparks flying everywhere, people carving wood and brushing the shavings into the gutter, whole families sitting on little plastic footstools eating Pho at a little plastic table as the motorbikes honk and zoom past. And this is all on the sidewalk. It's incredible! Most restaurants aren't the typical restaurant you see every day. A lot of times there's just a big pot of broth sitting on the sidewalk with a few small plastic stools or chairs around an equally small plastic table. The diner chooses their meat which is added to the broth along with ride noodles and vegetables and there you have it- real vietnamese Pho! This is also a popular item to have for breakfast. My first few days I though it was quite strange to eat hot noodle soup for brekky, but now I'm quite used to it and actually crave it in the morning when I wake up!
I'm sure a few of you are quite curious as to how it is as a backpacker here. It's wonderful! Everything is so cheap and it's wonderful to splurge a few extra dollars to live luxuriously, at least in backpacker standards. We've been staying at a really nice hotel that cost $15 USD, that means 7.50 each! This room includes a flat screen TV that has heaps of channels, A/C, hot water, towels and the price even includes breakfast and free internet. It's amazing. A typical meal which can be either Pho or rice/noodles with veggies usually cost around 20,000 dong which is just over $1 (17,700 dong = $1 USD) Of course you can get much more expansive meals, but we usually look at the menu and if they have fruit smoothies for 15,000 dong, we know it's reasonably priced. Having said all this, it is quite easy to overspend, partly because the vietnamese always double or triple the prices for tourists, so you have to bargain down the prices when buying things in shops or off the street. It always hard to know when you're paying a good price and not getting ripped off. But at the same time, you're often only bargaining over a single dollar, so it's not that big of a difference really.
Hanging out in Hanoi for a few days has opened my eyes to what the remaining couple months will be like traveling through asia and I've come to the conclusion that it's gonna be a pretty interesting time!!! Much different than my travels through Europe and NZ....

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