Back in Hanoi

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Back in Hanoi. Not my favorite place on Earth but I must admit it´s got some charm.

From Sapa, they drove us back to the train station where we took a night train back to Hanoi.

The train left us at the Hanoi station at 5-6 in the morning and after some haggling with a couple of taxi drivers we went to the hotel/travel agency to have a shower.If you were wondering...yes, you do have to haggle even at 5 in the morning!

After that we went out to see Hanoi before the crazy traffic.

Below is a picture that Susana took from a police vehicle...I kid you not, this is an official police car:

It´s amazing to see how many people go out early in the morning to exercise, they play badminton at the park, they do some kind of tai-chi , some running, etc...

We walked around the lake for a while until they started opening all the shops...

Until it came the time to have breakfast...

Actually we had coffee/hot chocolate with croissants. O:-)

With a full stomach, we decided to go and pay a visit to the Temple of literature, which turned out to be just another example of how much of the Vietnamese culture comes from the chinese.

Susana had a thing for weddings and every time she saw some couple getting their wedding pictures taken around the lake she also took a few. From all of them, perhaps the most striking is this one.

That's right, this is A WEDDING PICTURE!

From another wedding, the bridemaids wearing a typical Vietnamese dress. Mind you, this type of dress you could also see it at schools since it´s part of the girl's school uniform, generally all in white.

For the rest of the day we just walked about and tried to stay alive among the crazy traffic...Sometimes you need to take a picture, words cannot describe accurately what is like in Hanoi.

What do you do should you have to transport anything from point A to point B in Vietnam? You just take it with you on a motorbike of course!


After Hanoi, it was time to go south, so we took another night train to Hoi An. Night trains turned out to be a great way of travelling, you save a hotel fee for the night + you are already travelling and when you get up in the morning you are at your destination.

While meeting people here and there I had the chance to listen to some horror stories about travelling by bus in Vietnam... The bus may be cheaper but after what I heard...definetely not worth it...