Vietman Part 1: Definitely not the Hanoi Hilton! (March 12)

We arrived in Hanoi around 3pm and took our prearranged shuttle to our hotel in the middle of the Old Quarter. We had heard good things about the Elegance II Hotel on TripAdvisor, and as usual, TripAdvisor was spot on. We were greeted with warm smiles, amazing service, and an upgrade to the Honeymoon suite: the top floor with a balcony looking over all of Hanoi for $55 a night. So you see, Vietnam is like what Mexico or even Europe must have been like years ago - very inexpensive. So for $55 we were really living it up.  Just to give you a comparison, we stayed in some other very nice places later on for about $10 a night and our train ride from Hanoi to Hue (a 12 hour sleeper) was $6 each.

The rest of that day, Lindsay did a bit of work and later we explored the Old Quarter on foot. After talking to Lindsay's dad, its clear that Hanoi has changed quite a bit in the 35 years since he was there. He had the amazing experience of flying diplomats up to Hanoi at the end of the war and saw the situation first hand. That being said, compared to its sister city down south Saigon (now Ho Chi Min), Hanoi was still a few years behind. We wandered the busy markets dodging scooters and "cyclos," or bike taxis. The place was so alive with movement, sounds, and smells it was a bit overwhelming at times. I say a bit for me, since in my travels to India, China, and Thailand, I was fortunate to have been previously exposed to the pandamonium of Asian cities. Lindsay, on the other hand, was simply blown out of the water. We have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to explore many places in this world, but as I had warned her, Asia is a different ball of wax. The senses are always on overload attemping to survive the kinetic nature of the place.

The evening came, we had a mediocre meal at a restaurant recommended by our Lonely Planet guide (that was the last time we took restaurant recommendations from the guide), and we then went to a water puppet show down near the central lake. Apparently the water puppets are a traditional art form that the rural farmers used in the rice paddies to entertain the villagers. Now it's held in a theater full of video camera-toting white tourists. The parts that we saw were entertaining and beautiful, but Lindsay and I were so jet lagged that we slept through about 90% of the show. Right as the show ended we raced back to the hotel to go to bed.