Hanoi day three

I’m up at 4 with the church bells. It’s hard to sleep sometimes. Usually dawn is the one who can’t sleep I guess on this side of the world it’s my turn. It’s a beautiful church. I lie in bed until 7 and then we head out and eat at the kangaroo cafe. Lots of Aussies here so lots of Aussie businesses.

Eating baked beans with eggs, fries, toast, and bacon seems strange. It’s easily the heaviest thing I’ve had.

We walk past the lake and check out the women’s cultural museum. We don’t go inside but it looks cool from the street. We walk past the French quarter and the other tourists thin out a bit. Walking around with Dawn is great people stare and I catch them guiltily looking away and then stealing another glance. She is stunning so I’m not jealous. A child is so taken with dawn he has to walk up and talk to her. He gets in trouble with his teacher but you can tell it was totally worth it.

We sit at the park and get offered any number of things for sale and buy a post card from someone for way to much. We are suckers and the onslaught is too much sometimes. We walk to the main market its huge and crazy and some of the smells overpower us. Massive in size, Maybe a couple football fields and 3–4 stories. Stuff everywhere. I accidentally kick something over and get a look of disappointment and a shaking head as I walk away trying to apologize.

It’s lunch time and we are looking for one of the places we ate before, it seems hopeless. It is. We settle for a ban mi on the street sitting with roosters and scooters on tiny plastic chairs. The rooster has short legs but is pretty.
The street wears you out so we nap until 6ish. We go out and eat bun cha my new favorite. Noodles on the side a bowl of pork and broth with something like apple slices in it. Each place seems to make the broth slightly different but this stuff is good.

We pass part of the afternoon making conversation with a local crazy Aussie and then a bartender while dawn and I are harassed to buy more stuff from street vendors. I find that if you say no a hundred times and then make it look like your fingers are waking away they throw a look of disgust at you and then leave. Maybe that gesture is obscene I’ll have to ask someone.

We spend the evening just watching the crowd at the cathedral. The cathedral is surrounded by small cafes on every side that seat 30–60 people each with a motorcycle. Every cafe seems to have its own valet system. We watch in awe as this logistic nightmare seems to operate smoothly. The valets seem to be able to remember each person’s motorcycle without fail. No money changes hand we assume each cafe pays them.

They race back and forth with bikes zipping up and down the block and through traffic with deft percision. It’s fun to see and we are now jealous of this culture. It’s so fun to watch and we now want to learn Vietnamese bad, to be part of it and not see if from the outskirts.

Read the other entries from our Vietnam trip below
Day 1 – Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4 – Day 4 1/2 – Day 5 – Day 6 – Day 7 – Day 8 – Day 8 1/2 – Day 9 – Day 10 – Day 11 – Day 12 – Day 13 – Day 14 – Day 15 – Day 16 – Day 17 – Day 18 – Day 19 – Day 20 – Day 21