Hanoi 3

Third day in Hanoi was pretty relaxed. After the hotel breakfast of toast, eggs, some sort of watermelon, and some delicious passion fruit juice, we B-lined (well, once we remembered where it was) to the French bakery from yesterday. No pain au-chocolate today, but they regular croissants were just as perfect, and Cindhu's doughnut-type thing was pretty darned good too. From there, our agenda was to try to sort out our much talked about plans to make our way down the coast via motorcycle. A bit of searching online lead us to http://hanoimotorcyclerental.com/index.php which looked to be only a 10 minute walk from our hotel.

The shop owner, Mr. Phung, was very straightforward, if initially a bit skeptical of our semi-ambitious plans. But after a short conversation and conveying to him that I knew my way around motorcycles to some reasonable extent, we worked out a plan to rent their 160cc Honda GL (which will continue my streak of only riding Hondas) for about 9 days, down a route mixing coastal routes and roughly following the Ho Chi Minh Trail, ending in Da Nang, where we can drop off the bike for them to ship back to Hanoi. Not quite the full country trip that we had imagined, but this gets us off the hook for having to deal with the notoriously chaotic and dangerous traffic in Ho Chi Minh City. 

The rest of the morning followed a lazy route back to the hotel, including a few amusing sights, some incredibly cheap and delicious roadside beer, the wonderfully engaging and delicious experience of what was described as a "hot pot" but was more like a sizzle platter - in any case we were brought plates of rice, marinated beef with fresh lemongrass, vegetables and a thinner pepper sauce and given a cast iron plate over a small flame and left to our own accords. The experience, while wonderful, also marked our first clear case of being ripped off (and cemented the idea that we should always agree on a price before sitting down- no surprise that haggling doesn't work after you eat). All in all about $16 for the two of us is not THAT bad. 

Bia Hoi - fresh brewed, unpasteurized, super cheap street beer, people watching

I think these people were on our plane

Delicious AND interactive

Not much photo documentation of the rest of the day, but it was mostly full of snacking around the city and planning the rest of our time in Vietnam. Food highlights included 30cent soft serve cones from KFC - believe it or not, grilled pork skewers (Nem Nuong) could not be passed up after we smelled them from half a block away (50c each), our first Banh My (translates literally to bread, but in this case was filled with cinnamon spiced roast pork, pickled cabbage, green papaya, carrot, cucumber, a touch of mayonnaise and chili sauce - $1). While this set off all of the traditional food poisoning warnings, we both agreed it was one of the best sandwiches either of us has had. Then back the hotel with a brief stop at one of the many little produce stalls on our small street for a delicious giant mango for dessert.

Tomorrow: scooter trip to the Snake Village!