After two days in Ho Chi Minh City we hopped on a Vietjet Air flight up North to Hanoi.
Hanoi was such a nice change from the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City, although nearer the middle of the day if you were in the shopping areas it was pretty busy and the constant sound of tooting did begin to get to you.
Just a few minutes walk from where we were staying there is a sizeable lake which is really serene in the morning, and small enough that you can walk all the way around it without any troubles, we ended up walking around a couple of times on our visit to Hanoi.
There are also a number of sculptures around the lake, pretty trees which overhang the lakes edge and the gorgeous red bridge (as pictured above) which leads to a temple. It was around here that we were asked if we had a few minutes to talk by a few locals. They were from a language school and wanted to practice their English, we spent a few minutes talking to them and later that day I saw a few other groups around the area chatting to other English speaking tourists. A pretty cool way to get out of the classroom and apply what you have been learning that’s for sure!
If your bladder doesn’t like you then you are spoilt for choice with a few public toilets dotted around the lake, the only ones we used happened to be squat toilets (good times) and you were charged for the privilege of using them (2000VND – maybe 15cents NZ or something like that). I really dislike this about places overseas, if I’m going to pay for a toilet I at least want it to be really nice and not smell terrible, oh and being provided with toilet paper and soap would be great too thanks…. I suppose that’s just what I’m used too coming from New Zealand. Luckily we were prepared with toilet paper and dettol in our day bag.
There are quite a few dogs in Vietnam and the bulk of them are tiny sad looking ones like this guy (who I think was on his last legs, he was limping around sniffing at rubbish on the street), although in Hanoi there were a few more bigger dogs and some even wearing coats. It was ‘winter’ in Hanoi, which is a lot warmer than the NZ Winter!
We stumbled upon another temple type place on one of our afternoon walks and decided to go in since the entry fee was only about 1NZ$, since we didn’t have a guide we have no idea exactly what it was but there were a lot of pretty buildings which looked like they had Chinese Heritage. It was really nice and peaceful in here as well and the trees were amazing, they were so massive and the roots were pretty incredible!
We also kept on seeing people selling these kind of tasty looking ball things all over the place, we had no idea what they were but gave in and brought some from a lady and went and sat by the lake to try them. They were a bit tasteless to be honest, except the ones that I think were covered in icing sugar or something similar. They were kind of like fried dough that was hollow in the middle and they all had different things in the middle, the one below had a round ball in the middle.
Neither of us were fans of these so they didn’t get finished, but I’m glad we tried them!
Next up we moved on to Ha Long Bay!
If you want to read more about our Vietnam Adventure please see these posts: