Hustle and bustle in Hanoi

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Day 18
We awoke to an overcast sky. I think actually more overcast than yesterday so I guess we lucked out with doing the boat tour yesterday. We then headed back to Hanoi to be reunited safely with our bags.
I opted to follow Tuomas on one of his quests to find a great place for lunch, even though I had already eaten at the hotel. Good thing as the place we ended up at (Highway 4 Restaurant) was slightly overpriced for my budget. It did serve crocodile (which I sampled some of Tuomas') and sparrow among some other exotic meats. After lunch we explored parts of the old quarter. The old quarter is a maze of many little streets. 36 of these streets each used to be primarily one market and many are still named after that market (i.e. Cloth Street, Iron Street). It is something interesting I've noticed in SE Asia is that often all the businesses that offer the same service or sell the same items will be right next door to one another. This to me makes things more favourable for the buyer rather than the seller. I did debate buying some bootleg DVD's but my conscience wouldn’t let me. Plus I figured I could just download it for free. While in the old quarter, I ran into some other group members and who were up for a visit to a café to indulge in some ice cream. I also indulged in chocolate cake. I’ve been doing well not having good chocolate on a daily basis so this treat was worth every penny.
We dined at a place called Café 69. This would be the final group dinner of the trip with everyone present as Aimee would be departing a day early. I had the most amazing pork chops. They were seasoned with local spices and tones of firey black peppercorns. It was a nice final dinner as we were in a private room all crowded around one table.
After dinner, Michelle, Judou and I went to a Vietnamese Water Puppet show. It wasn’t anything particularly impressive but it was enjoyable given it was cheap (40.000 dong) and short (an hour). There was no real story, just various scenes of puppets splashing about in water. My favourite scenes were titled: 2 Phoenixes Dance (really they were making love as an egg popped out at one point), Flute on Water Buffalo, and Faerie Dance. Children playing with ball was also slightly enjoyable.
The night was not over yet as we joined a small group headed to a local jazz club. The music was decent and the atmosphere was fairly comparable to what you would expect in North America. The club was simply called “Jazz Club.” Happy St Patricks Day! (We didn't see anyone in green)

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Comments

[Jeff]

hey hey
hey adam.. yeah if you bought boot leg dvds, wouldn't they be for a different zone?? sorta like luke's dvds from oz!?