Hanoi

We landed in Hanoi, north Vietnam to discover the capital before starting heading down in this long country. What catches your attention first is the traffic, people really can't or don't want to drive anywhere near safe. Red lamps or zebras mean nothing and we were quicker as32 pedestrians than an ambulance with their lights and sirens on. Thousands and thousands of motorbikes on the road and it can take double amount of time to get somewhere than google says just beacuse road crossing can take long minutes.
We had an amazing kick start with long awaited local food such as quang (beef noodle) soup, banhmi sandwiches, pho soup, cheese and coffee bun, cheese icecream, and of course fried rice! As Vietnam used to be a french colony there are bread, baguette, bakeries and patisseries with full
of amazing cakes. It was interesting to think that we havent had any bread for months (apart from roti in Malayasia).
The old town is full of bars, restaurants and most importantly cheap beer, we arrived to the heaven of backpackers. So many of them are around, such as Flora's ex! A couple of french girls gave us some good tips for Cambodia too.
We visited an old prison built and used by the French and then later by the Vietnamese in the war with the Americans. The exhibition was rather biased, which maybe isn't suprising, being in one of the only remaining one party socialist countries in the world. At the end many countries opinion was presented of the Vietnamese war in the 60s - 70s, marches, protests and speeches all over the world against the war. However they were all shown as supporting the North Vietnamese communists rather than the hippie peace and love movement.Read more