Lyd's Adventures: Hong Kong and Hanoi

We flew into Hong Kong on the 30th December and made our way by airport bus to my brother Warren's brand spanking new hostel The Mahjong where he had booked us into one of his 'deluxe queen pods'. It was a rather interesting bus trip, with the first bus we caught literally catching on fire! We were pulled over by the police who noticed the black smoke coming out the back of the bus. We then stood on the side of the motorway for a bit until the next airport bus came along and we all crammed into it. Eventually we made it to the hostel. The place is great, Warren and his two business partners have done an excellent job fitting it out and anticipating travellers needs... It is things like free super fast wifi and numerous power sockets all over the place that make a difference. It is a wonder Warren has any spare time as he has already set up Hong Kong Pub Crawl and Dim Sum Experience businesses, as well as holding down a part-time teaching job!

The next day we flew into Hanoi for our 2-week Vietnam adventure. If anybody needs a super cheap, super awesome hotel in Hanoi we can highly recommend the Hanoi 3B Hotel. We had a deluxe room which cost us the princely sum of USD$25.50 per night and included free wifi, a couple of bottles of water each day, plus an amazing breakfast each morning, including some very good beef pho. The pho, along with some of the exceptionally good (and super strong!) Vietnamese coffee was the perfect start to the day.

The hotel was ideally located, right in the heart of the old quarter with excellent restaurants just moments away.

The thing that made our stay in the hotel so memorable was the staff. They were incredibly friendly, and couldn't do enough for us. We used the hotel as a base for our whole time in Vietnam as we were flying back out of Hanoi 2 weeks later. We did trips to Sapa, Halong Bay, then down to Hue and Hoi
An, returning to the hotel each time. This meant that we could leave one of our big packs at the hotel and just take the things we needed for each trip. They really were sweet... Every time we headed off on an overnight train they would send us off with extra bottles of water and a roll of toilet paper! The lobby boy would also travel by scooter to the train station, meet our taxi and take us to the correct compartment on the train. Whenever we checked into one of the rooms we had a towelling animal and fresh rose petals to greet us!

Since it was New Year's Eve when we arrived, we thought we had better wander down to the lake in the old quarter where all the action was. Apart from a random rave, blasting out dance music, there wasn't actually a huge amount happening, despite the thousands of people lining the lake's shore. We got a few fireworks at midnight, but they were bit of a fizzler really... I think they save the big celebration for the lunar new year!

Hanoi is a pretty frenetic city. Crossing the roads is an interesting experience thanks to the numerous motorbikes and scooters that rule the roads. A 'green man' on traffic lights gives you a sporting chance of getting across a street, but only about half the traffic actually obeys the red light! We got our street crossing down to a fine art... Our favourite tactic was to find a local woman with a baby in a stroller, then use that as a moving shield with the assumption that nobody would hit the baby! We soon figured that you just had to start walking, regardless of how busy the street was. As long as you maintained a constant pace and didn't deviate from your path, the motorbikes would just go around you. Families of 4 were the most we saw on one bike, but friends who have also been to Hanoi have seen 5...

One day we happened to walk past a school at finishing time. The 'school pick-up' is rather different than what we are used to in NZ!

Some of the wiring in Hanoi is 'interesting' to say the least. We hoped the linesman knew what he was doing!

Our favourite thing to do in Hanoi was just wandering the streets of the old quarter. You got whole streets selling the same type of goods. We also loved walking around the lake which seemed to be a popular past time with the locals. The couple of days after New Year the area was totally packed.

The Vietnamese food was amazing, I don't think we had one bad meal, and it was all incredibly cheap, including being able to buy beers in restaurants for less than NZD$1 each, In general the food was super fresh and tasty. They use lots of chili, lime, lemongrass and fish sauce, as well as loads and loads of fresh herbs. My type of food! We enjoyed just wandering the streets and coming across little local market areas like below. The fish was so fresh it was still twitching!

They also have some very interesting trees in Vietnam!

We had a favourite restaurant in Hanoi just up from our hotel. On our last night there we managed to get a premium table on a private balcony where we had an absolute feast.

The green mango salad is one of my favourites and their version of it was awesome. This huge plate of it cost less than NZD$2 too!

We also paid 'tourist prices' (which were still far less than what we'd pay in NZ) to have coffee and cake in a pretty upmarket cafe by the lake. Nic and Claire, this is where your postcards got written!

One of the few cultural things we did in Hanoi was to visit the Temple of Literature which is Vietnam's first national university. It was an interesting place to wander around. Below is the shrine to Confucius.