‘Good Morning Vietnam’ were gonna be the first words out of my mouth, but…then on the first of the month…how could I abandon my old friend ‘White Rabbit’ after many years just like that. I made up for it by just absorbing all this little gem of a city has to offer throughout the day though. Hanoi, you are special…
My first day in Old Quarter turned out pretty awesome. I thought I was gonna have trouble killing time, just hanging out in cafés seeing as I checked out of my hotel at 12pm and will be taking a bus to Sapa only at 10pm tonight. Oh my, to the contrary…did time fly.
After breakfast I went to ‘Young coffee shop’ where I had an extremely strong, but good cup of Vietnamese brew.
I also met my first friend there. Gosh, I forgot her name again. Well, acquaintance then…tsk. Anyway, we shared some type of street food donut something and then headed to the women’s museum.
I pretended to be interested in the museumy things cause she was, but I won’t do that next time. One museum per destination, just to tick the list. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool, but 30 min there would have been enough for me. I am more of a nature / outdoorsy traveller. The one thing that got my attention though, was one of the installations that focused on a matriarchal society. Yeah, who runs the world anyway…us mother fuckin’ girls!
So what, I’m not a museum girl, but I can absorb the culture in many other ways. I can drink a beer on any corner on a plastic chair for example.
After the museum, we walked around the Hoan Kiem lake area some. It is a public holiday today, so there were a lot of locals out and about.
Then, we went searching for lunch. Being soooo spoilt for choice, we finally settled on some street food and I had my first Pho. Kak lekke. So flavoursome. Not what I expected at all…citrusy, spicy, meaty and healthy all at the same time.
After lunch, We went our separate ways…
I then came to the same spot I hung out at last night for a few beers – The Rock Store Pub. Anyway, It’s 8pm and I’m still here. The lights have gone on and the scooters have increased. The stages are being set up and the drunken backpackers have arisen from the death. I am feeding off this crazy energy!
Think I’ll be heading to a dinner place soon for Ban mhi. After that though a great shower will be amazing, cause sticky is not the word. All in all, today was an experience I will treasure forever and to think this is only but the beginning of the holiday! Can’t wait to see what the rest of it has to offer.
Oh and then there was this guy, he just kept wanting to wash my shoes all day! The equivalent of those guys at the traffic lights in SA who just randomly starts washing your wind screen. Here they use scooters and voete bikes a lot thought, so he is quite the entrepreneur.
So, this was my first blog post and hopefully there’ll be more…