Hanoi day 1

We had a very exhausting day in Hanoi. I forgot how completely frenetic this place can be. Actually I think it is even more so than when I was here 9 years ago (yes 9, thought it was 8...where does the time go!). We started our day with a hearty breaky then we headed out into the Old Quarter armed with our Lonely Planet. There was a handy little map with the walking route. We figured we would try and follow that at least some of the walk, with a detour to the "computer street" to try and find a converter for our electronics (our converter does not seem to work). The first 4 hours of our walk was very fun and interesting. We checked out Lake Hoan Kiem, stopped for coffee at Highland Cafe, walked down silk street and many other streets selling various items. Then came our detour to the "computer street" which didn't have computers at all, only hardware stores. Nobody seemed to have what we were looking for. The street was chaotic with cars and motorbikes speeding by and no room to walk on the sidewalks. Of course this is not new, this is in fact par for the course with respect to the Old Quarter. But by this point we were exhausted and beyond hot (humidity here is pretty brutal). On top of that we got caught up briefly in a police chase lol. We are walking along when suddenly a couple of police vans pull up and 6 or 7 police guys jump out and run into one of the stores. We literally had to jump out of the way. Anyway, our detour was a bit longer than anticipated and by the time we made our way back to our hotel's neighbourhood, we were in full sensory overload. Now for me to get a sensory overload is pretty major. I've done quite a bit of traveling and been in many similar environments including Hanoi before. For some reason though we hit our ceiling and ended up in a zombified state simply trying to get back to our hotel. It made crossing Hanoi Old Quarter streets quite a challenge. Anyway, it is quite a place. We ended our evening sitting on a small patio above one of the small streets eating good, cheap food and drinking beer while watching the young Hanoians cruising on their motorbikes and the shop keepers hawking their wares.

Tomorrow we are off to Hoa Binh for a few days. We are not sure what the internet connection will be like so we may be incommunicado for a few days. The next post we make will be after us having finally met our little man!! We are coming Van!

Here are a few pics of Hanoi to tide you over: