Hanoi

Well. Vietnam is VERY different from Singapore. Singapore, despite being a major Asian economy, clearly has many western influences. There are burger kings and giant skyscrapers and businessmen and financial traders. This is the skyline of Singapore.


Hanoi (and Vietnam in general) has almost zero visible western influence. The society is the most alien of any I've ever been to. It's awesome.


There are very few traffic laws -- on every road, hundreds of people riding motorcycles dart in and out of traffic with larger vehicles going toward or against the flow of traffic.


We had some difficulty getting to the hotel from our airport. Our driver was detained by Vietnamese uniformed officers for about 20 minutes. We have no idea why, but he was clearly distraught afterwards!

Driving from the airport, we saw vast rice fields everywhere with locals working in the heat. Although it's a very poor country, everyone works very hard - the unemployment rate is almost zero.


That's a view of sunset from our hotel. We took a walk around Old Hanoi to find dinner and settled on a good chain restaurant called Pho 24 (pho being the Vietnamese staple of noodle soup). Then we had some icecream


We all are a bit jetlagged still and got exhausted by 10PM so went back to the hotel.


There are thousands of Vietnamese eating on the streets outside of their shops, with motorcycles zooming every which way.


It's truly cool.



Btw, I'm writing this post from the top of a boat in halong bay, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. We slept on this boat last night. I'll blog about it more later, it's now time for breakfast. But here's a preview!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone