As we all know, Pho,Vietnamese beef noodle soup, is like liquid magic, it heals the sick and allows the stumbling drunk to walk straight once more. My one—most important—goal on this trip was to come to Viet Nam to eat this life giving broth, but being vegetarian did pose a slight obstacle for me, but no mind, success will be mine!
Arriving once more in a new city at the butt-crack of dawn, Ashley and i could already tell we would love our stay; even in the darkness of the pre-dawn we could see the quaint architecture of squished, colorful building with balconies, presumably a la style Française. We did have a bit of difficulty in hiring a taxi to our hostel at the wee hour of 6:30am, and ended up paying way too much because the currency conversion is a little ridiculous- 17,500 Vietnamese Dong to $1 US, or 2,500 Vietnamese Dong to 1 RMB. Often in Viet Nam you can pay in US dollars but as we have been being paid for teaching in RMB this was not very helpful and a lot more expensive for us than we had anticipated. Anyway, we made it to the Bodega Hotel (highly recommend them) and waited around in the restaurant upstairs ‘til we could get into our room and have a much needed shower! Once we were freshened up we went out walking with plans to eat some Pho, sadly we found some other sort of Vietnamese street soup, good, but not Pho good.
We tried to go to the Museum of Revolutionary Vietnam, but it was closed for Tet, as were many things, as we would soon learn…so we went to the History Museum across the way. It was very interesting to see ancient artifacts and to see how closely related and influenced Vietnam has been by China. We walked around Hoan Kiem lake in the old quarter and got a coffee. Vietnamese ca fe is so delicious! Ashley and i have vowed to buy condensed milk in bulk when we get home. Later that night we hit up some bars and cafes and we got a little tipsy and lost but we had a pretty good time, despite the fact that the linchpin of our plan for the evening, the Funky Monkey, was not at all funky!
The next morning after some discussion and deep soul searching we decided to change our return route into China and avoid Nanning altogether, instead going north into Yunnan province and stopping in some local Vietnamese villages along the way. With this in mind we were headed to the train station to buy tickets for the border town of Lao Cai. On the way to the train station we stopped for lunch at an amazing restaurant called KOTO, Know One Teach One. An Australian-born Vietnamese man created a training program for street kids in Hanoi to help give them skills to find jobs in the food and service sector. It started as a small sandwich shop and now it's a phenomenon, it's world renown, it has great food! i bought a cook book from the restaurant after my fantastic green papaya salad, so be prepared for me to try to cook some Vietnamese delicacies in a kitchen near you!
We also went to the Temple of Literature which was right around the corner from the restaurant, mostly in honor of my mom. It turns out that there isn't a whole lot of literature in this particular temple, but it was still interesting. It's a Confucius temple and the site of the first university in Viet Nam, but sadly the actual university was destroyed by the French. The place was crawling with local tourists and everyone cramming into the inner courtyard to offer up incense and prayers for the new year. The outer courtyard is filled with hundreds of steles mounted on the backs of stone tortoises, each one has the biography of a great scholar carved into it. We rubbed the tortoise heads for good luck, as is customary.
Now, the train station. Tet is the Spring Festival of Viet Nam and it was in full swing while we were there. The train we wanted to take was an 8 hour overnight, and all the sleepers were sold out so we had to take seats, at least there were soft! So we booked our train and thought it should be smooth sailing from there on out, sadly this was not the case... you shall see. But the rest of our evening in Hanoi was great. We met a couchsurfer for drinks and Pho, hooray, at last! Manh is a local artist and he took us on our first motorbike ride in the land of motorbikes.
sidenote: upon arrival to Viet Nam the first thing you will undoubtedly notice is the sheer number of motorbikes, scooters, what have you. They's everywhere! They're on the sidewalk, the street, trying steadily to run you over, or at the very least, to get you to hop on so they can overcharge you to take you somewhere that you could have walked to in 5 min. Hanoi is a really navigable city and i can't imagine anything being really outside a 20-30 min. walk, but no matter everyone, from school girls to grandpas, has a motorbike! And the best part about it all is that while you need a driver's license to drive a car, you definitely do not need one for a motorbike, and we took advantage of this lax policy later...
Manh took us to his friend's bar, creatively named 1/2 Man 1/2 Noodle. We hung out with his British girlfriend and some other foreigners, as well as his friend Truong. Upon entry into the room where we were all drinking and some playing pool the girls in the room openly warned us that "Truong is crazy." And this could not have been more true! Within five minutes he proposed marriage to me and alternated yelling out and beating his fists on the table with trying to get me to drink his beer. We also learned that he had recently broken his collar bone because he fell asleep while driving his motorbike home from a bar! We finished the night at Red Mao bar, said goodnight to Manh and Lana and wished them luck for their weekend trip into the countryside to paint water buffalo for Manh's upcoming art exhibit!
We got Pho in the morning and headed out with a day pack to catch a bus on the side of the freeway to the seaside city of Hai Phong. It is common practice all over Asia for long distance buses to drive slowly out of town with the controller hanging out the door yelling the name of the destination in desperate hope of filling up the bus before they get out on the road. It works well for the traveler who doesn't want to go all the way to the bus station! Two and a half hours later we were in Hai Phong with no place to stay!
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