Not one bit.
Our 50 minute flight on Laos Air from Vientiane to Hanoi is smooth in the very clean and modern Airbus. Swiftly, we navigate customs (having arranged our visas beforehand) and meet up with our driver who begins the hour long drive into the Old Quarter of Hanoi where our hotel is located.
The weather is noticeably cooler (18-19 degrees) and gray, the city shrouded in a combination of low level mist and smog.
It is a zoo — an out and out circus of humanity and motor scooters, push bikes, cars, cyclos, trucks, oxen and 6 million people, people, and more people. None of us can recall seeing such bedlam that disguises itself as a city. Only when we are dropped a few blocks from our hotel (the bus driver refuses to drive us to the door because of the narrow streets and traffic) do we get an up close and personal view of the pure lunacy. Hundreds of scooters swarm like angry bees up and down the alleys (you can't call them streets). There are no sidewalks as they are filled with parked scooters, pop up "stores" and people sitting in clusters taking up the space. Street vendors dominate the curbs and halfway into the street. We walk carefully. Scooters and cars brush up against us on all sides. Watch your toes!
Just carrying a tree on my scooter...
The street teems with life, horns bleeting, the smell of grilled meat and garbage, lights flashing. All you can do is gape and laugh hysterically at the madness all around. It is contagious. Scary yes, but so surreal that you want to remain part of it and see what will happen next. How outrageous can it get?!
Our hotel is old, plain and adequate. The internet connection is blazingly fast — now there's some Asian ingenuity. No Facebook we are told, it's banned by the government.
We're anxious to get back out on the streets and immerse ourselves in the chaos. Bouna takes us for dinner at a local place and we sample the staple food "Pho" (pronounced "fur") and then we walk to Hoan Kiem Lake in the middle of the Old Quarter.
Crossing the street seems impossible, but we soon learn that you just have to walk and trust that the scooters and cars will slow and part around you. Surprisingly, they do.
We are all giddy and in good spirits, riding the buzz of the city at night. The shops in Vietnam are more interesting, diverse and stylish — enough to draw us in. We go for a drink at a real authentic local "bar" — if you can call it that! It is nothing more than a shop stand on the curb with plastic patio chairs that build out onto the street. No place to sit? No problem just throw out a few more chairs in the road and let the traffic move around you.
We sip our Halida beers (cost: $1) and just stare at it all as it plays out. Prostitutes walk by, hawkers sell fruit/dried squid/you name it, shocked tourists get the lay of the land, scooters shoot by, buses navigate the laneway of a road and locals cavort and carouse. My foot is almost run over three times and our throats burn from the exhaust(ing) fumes. (Seems we will have use for those surgical masks we brought after all!) It is the very best T.V., everywhere and every moment there is something to see.
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