HanoiWater Puppets.We arrived quite early in the morning to Hanoi, and thankfully the taxi driver was there to pick us up. Not in a good mood (because apparently our hostel didn’t tell him our flight was delayed for five hours), he was silent the entire way. Arriving at our hostel-which was barred and locked down at night, our taxi driver woke up the hostel worker to let us in. Immediately falling asleep in our very clean, extremely cool and well kept room, we were awoken abruptly by a call in the morning. Breakfast was over but they were going to let us order for another half hour because we had gotten in so late the night before. Putting our contacts in, we headed downstairs and enjoyed the best breakfast we’ve had so far- fried eggs, a crusty loaf of bread, cheese, jam and bananas. We looked forward to the morning every day. Back to out room and changing, we headed out for the day. Following the map we were given, we headed toward the Hoan Kiem Lake and the Ngoc Son Temple. It was extremely hot and humid out. The number one thing to do in Hanoi is see the water puppet show, so Becca insisted that we go and buy tickets, because they sell out days in advance. We found the theatre, and were able to buy tickets for the show that had just started. Heading in, Becca was excited and I was apprehensive. I don’t really like cartoons, and this didn’t seem much better. The water puppet show was complimented with live music and singers, singing about the Vietnamese folk tales that we were watching. Overall, Becca enjoyed it, I would have preferred Fantasia. I actually really wanted to watch it after the puppet show. Stepping out of the theatre, we saw that a monsoon had begun. And we were yet again without our ponchos. Sitting inside the café, we ordered tea and coffee and waited it out. And then decided to see a movie, since we didn’t want to walk around in the rain. We found a theater, made it inside after a couple attempts with different doors, escalator rides, and elevator incidents. We chose a movie, Just Friends, bought popcorn and hoped that it wasn’t dubbed. It wasn’t. We spent a blissful couple of hours in the cool air conditioning, listening to perfect English. Leaving the theater, we searched out fish fry, didn’t find it and made a horrible mistake. We ordered Western food and it was awful. Chicken sandwiches and salad have never been so disastrous. Learning our lesson (especially after the waiter kept asking why we weren’t eating), we walked back to our hostel, stumbling upon a hidden gem on the way-the night market. Walking into the throngs of people, we were immediately confused by the Minnie Mouse ears, light up star wands and bright, shiny outfits. THIS was the night market? Teens in short little outfits, dads carrying their little children with masks on, and the unintelligent people trying to ride through on motorbikes. They literally had to walk them through the crowd. Snapping pictures of the colorful blow up balloons, face masks and cotton candy, we vowed to come back another night to partake in the festivities. Back at our hostel, we were given directions to a good local restaurant-Highway 4. Inside, we ordered a few things to split: spring rolls, fried fish and little corn. We’re getting insanely good with chopsticks. Well, Becca is still working on it. Everything tasted vaguely of Wasabi, and we were not as satisfied as we were hoping for. The next day we walked around looking for the art section, because we really want to get artwork in many places. We found a nice art gallery, where we bought small paintings in bright colors. Then, we decided to try Moon Cake. In the autumn, Moon Cakes are a specialty, and there are many different kinds. With a stand or shop on almost every corner selling them, we walked up to one and chose one with a pink label, hoping it was some sort of berry. We were thinking that it would be like a fruitcake. Finding a bench by the lake, we opened the packaged cake with preservative little packet. Hmmm. Splitting it open, we were surprised to find a large, orange, moon shaped object. We later found out that this is salted duck yolk. ---I made Becca try the cake first to make sure there weren’t nuts. There weren’t. But it was definitely not good. It had a strange flavor, was heavy and not what we were expecting. Moving past this delicacy, we walked on to the night market. There are two sections to the night market, a shopping area with clothing, makeup, cell phone cases, purses and wallets and a festival area with balloons, face masks, drinks in bags, cotton candy and bright lights. We first walked into the night market and bought a few items to replace some items we had brought. Becca bought some tank tops and shorts, and I bought underwear (instead of washing mine) and shorts. Pleased with our seven dollar (total) purchases, we headed into the festival. Much more crowded than the previous evening, we were pushed and shoved around by good-natured, cheery people. Everyone was in a good mood and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Surrounded by the bright lights, sparkles and bubbles, it was difficult to believe that this place was fairly recently ravaged by war and destruction. We will definitely come back to Vietnam. |