Bring on the Hanoizeeee

I'd say that when people think about cities in Vietnam they really only thing about Saigon and Hanoi sort of falls by the wayside. Well I'm not gonna lie, Hanoi is nuts, perhaps even more so than Saigon (though I like Saigon more). It's louder and more crowded (still got nothing on India) and you'll walk around at night and just so much random stuff going on it's pretty crazy.

We got in around 5:30 and took a cab to our hostel. This is the first "look at me I'm a hip hostel" place we've stayed at so far on this trip. There were a few in Europe we went to but I think it's less common in Vietnam. But yea, it's run by aussies, has a movie room, 8 computers, wifi, a pool table, and sells beer. It's kinda cool but I don't know I'm just less into this scene than I was before. Maybe I've grown out of it, maybe I don't feel like partying with euros when I'm in Asia, I'm not totally sure.

After we dropped our stuff our we went out and stumbled into this massive night market and just sort of wandered around till we stopped at a stall for some bomb as pho ga (chicken pho) and then wandered to another stall for a beer, then finally, though unintentionally found our way to the "beer corner" which is quite aptly named. Picture an intersection with 5 streets, 3 of the corners with "bars" or basically tons of plastic chairs filled with 20-40 people, foreign and viet, with the other two corners featuring a random art store and a fro yo joint. It's pretty insane. We knocked back a few, chatted with some Israelis then went to this bar that some polish dude on a scooter gave us a flier for.

Whackest bar ever. Up 4 flights of stairs, expensive drinks, shitty shitty shitty live band, and us trying to get out asap. Afterwards we went to this other popular looking street stall and sort of went to town. We got some beefsteak in gravy and fries (they recommended it), roast pigeon, and roast frog with lot leaves. The beef was way disappointing and everyone else was eating it, bizzaro. The pigeon was just as tasty as they do it in Chinatown. A tiny bird made of all dark meat, and the frog was delicious as well. Felix wasn't really that down for either but he tried so we are proud of his pallettes continued development. I wonder if it's due to proximity that northern Viet food tastes a lot more like Chinese food to me.

Today I woke up for another NBA game and once again it was a blowout but while I was watching it one of the dudes that works here pretty much just came up, asked if he could change it, then proceeded to watch his soaps for an hour. Not gonna lie, not cool man. Just cause I'm actually paying to stay here I feel that I should get dibs on the tv. It's water under the bridge but was bizzare enough to be worth mentioning.

BUN CHA - picture tiny little bits of grilled pork and grilled ground pork in soup. now add a huge ass pile of veggies, soup, noodles, and eggrolls. toss it all together and taste the glory that is bun cha. It's street food but there's a few joints that serve it too. I don't think Hanoi has that much local food so it's one of their main things and it's really pretty awesome. If i opened a bun cha place at home it would blow up.

Cha Ca - I think this is Hanoi's other thing. Basically there's a stove on your table with hella garlicky ass fish. Then they toss in an obscene amount of green onions and leeks and stir it around, toss it in a bowl of vermicelli and fish sauce and you go to town. This is sort of fancy hanoi food i think and it's pretty decent but not as life changing as bun cha. We went to one of the somewhat well known copycats of the really famous place where its' supposed to be really really had to get a table.

Hanoi also has a lot of the crazy Ho Chi Minh stuff. We missed out on his mausoleum because it's only open from 8-11 AM. We were able to check out his old house as well as his stilt house which still had his fish tank. I personally feel like Ho Chi Minh's Goldfish would make a great band name. There was also this one column pagoda which is this small is pagoda on one single column rising out of the middle of the water. Some people think it's too small to be impressive but I really dig the way the water and the shrine jive with each other. Finally there's the totally insane Ho Chi Minh Museum which is organized thematically so there's like a section on the media an on the war and like a 3d version of guernica. It's really totally insane. I'll post pics soon because I'm sort of at a loss to describe it.

Anyways the next blog post will be on Halong Bay!