We flew from Hue to Hanoi and lost our sun and blue sky. Really had forgotten what it's like to have gray sky & need a sweatshirt. (I know, poor me.).
Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and a huge city. I'm sure we've only seen a tiny bit of it yet we've had several 20 min taxi rides. Not quite as clean as other cities but good roads. From our hotel room, we can see a huge round-about with 4 or 5 turn offs. It's just fascinating to watch how the traffic ebb & flows with no one having the right of way. Trucks, busses, cars, motorcycles galore, bicycles, pedestrians just go with the flow. Overloaded with you name it and carrying several people who may or may not be holding on. It's just one of those things you gotta see to believe. Another thing that cracks us up are all the makeshift restaurants that people just carry on the back of their bikes. They carry small plastic stacks of tables & stools, bags of food, propane tanks, & a burner and set up on the sidewalk wherever …often right in front of a nice restaurants. . No problem!! Last night we went to the Old Quarters and just walked around seeing lots of the old houses & shops. We went to the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater and saw a very entertaining show where all the puppets danced in a pond while an 8 piece band played the local instruments. Totally enjoyed watching the puppets swim, fish, paddle the boats, plant rice, ride water buffalo & dance in the water. Just a great performance. Water puppet shows are Vietnamese oldest art form.
It's Sunday morning here & our bus ride will pick us up at this hotel at 1 so we're just hanging out here. I needed to do lots of catch up anyways. Also, we were able to talk to five of the gkids & Sarah. A bonus that we've really enjoyed on this trip…we're glad they have phones now!!
Tidbits:
-Pringles & Oreos have been available in most every country we've been to
-Soccer is usually the most common sport but we haven't hardly seen any games being played here
-I found a cracker & some cheese I like and I probably eat that for lunch 5 out of 7 days. Sometimes for dinner too!
