Hanoi city tour is awe!

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The first time we landed in Hanoi, there was someone from the tour agent picked us from the airport to the hotel to check in. We had sometimes to relax in the evening. Just went to sleep for the trip around the city in the next day.

In the morning, our tour guide, Mr. Kiem led us walking around in the old part of the city. You quickly move up the learning curve and find out to survive in the traffic. Even if it looks impossible to cross the streets in between the scooters, taxis, bicycles and rickshaws, we somehow managed to. This could be the new challenge in a TV show like fear factor. The traffic is like one big (kind of) well functioning organism, and we have to admit that the scooter drivers are very competent in avoiding crashing into us.

Hanoi day tour is only just enough to scratch the surface of this vibrant city. The itinerary around the city included Van Mieu, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, Hoan Kiem Lake, Old Quarter. Only in one day but we can discover about the historic Hanoi and modern Hanoi as well. The old part of the city is special in the way, that many streets have their own specialty. There are many beautiful streets, a blacksmith street, a mirror street, a silk street and so on. Almost everywhere we saw Vietnamese people sitting and eating in small street kitchens. We tried two of them. They only made one dish, but were quite good at it. Very tasty compared to our northern Vietnam culinary experiences. A lot of places people sell vegetables and fresh meat (no cooling). The scooters are parked on the sidewalks, so pedestrians have to use the street. Chaos? No, Hanoi. In between all the life and noise we found small oases in form of temples. Most of them are Buddhist and very color full.

In the evening we attended the famous water puppet show. Very impressive, how the puppeteers can control the puppets. Well, they do have 3 years of training. The stories are from the rural Vietnam and some adventures including love between dragons. There even were a live band and the whole experience was much better than expected.

To sum up, our visit in Hanoi was a very interesting experience. Very different from anything else, that we have seen. Absolutely worth a visit.

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