Hanoi - stopover outbound

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Our first day in Hanoi was a bit more challenging than HCMC. We are just here for one night before heading out onto Hao Long bay and after we got downtown to the hotel we tried to go find some lunch. Turns out that all maps are not created equal; and the ones we had (especially where the hotel was located) ere not so good making navigation a bit of a challenge. IN the old quarter of Hanoi the street names change every block as well and we found ourselves at a quarter with 5 streets of which only 3 appeared on the map, and on the map they did not intersect. The waitress where we stopped for lunch didn't help much when she placed us about 2 blocks away from where we really were.

Eventually we got orientated and managed to find our way around the old quarter for a walk down to the lake. Hanoi is really quite beautiful and when it is cleaned up and restored (when, not if) it truly will be a very beautiful city. Traffic here is really quite something though, even compared to other huge cities we have been to in asia and other parts of the world. The sheer number of scooters on the road plus the lack of any traffic signals except at the largest intersections, large numbers of pedestrians and no or blocked sidewalks all conspire to make is a pretty exciting place to walk around.

We are leaving early the next morning so we took the one quick walk and hit the hay for the night.

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