Our hotel, impressively called The Impressive, was our first port of call after our daredevil ride in from the airport. All the way hundreds and hundreds of scooters that were weaving in and out and between the traffic kept us enthralled.
We were situated in the Old Quarter, near Hoan Kiem lake. This has the original street layout and architecture of old Hanoi.
At the beginning of the 20th century the city consisted of only about 36 streets, most of which are now part of the old quarter. Each street then had merchants and households which specialised in a particular trade. There were silk traders, jewellery merchants etc and they are still there. We roamed the streets around the old quarter and many streets have shop after shop all plying the same stuff.....Christmas decoration street, lighting street, bedroom furniture street, toy street and coffin street are only a few.
Everyone and everything is being transported by bike and scooter.
We did a city tour which took in The Tran Quoc pagoda which was built in the sixth century. A bodhi tree is in the gardens and it is said to have been taken from a cutting of the original tree, under which Buddha sat and achieved enlightenment.
It is a very beautiful and tranquil place even though there were lots of tourists there were many people inside praying and putting down offerings.
We ate out at lots of roadside vendors and pavement noodle houses..... As long as its hot was our motto. The food was quick and there were plenty of veges.
We found a great cheap fast food.... Vietnamese ....of course.... Where we returned many times. This was a family owned joint, like most, even down to the little puddly tat that would come and visit from upstairs.
Loved the hustle and bustle and the constant noise. The jumping out of the way of the never ending stream of scooters seemed the norm after a week. To cross the road it was GO! AND KEEP MOVING AT A CONSTANT SPEED.... The riders seemed to be able to judge correctly ..... thank some god ....and we arrived safely on the other side.
Next stop north to Sapa.
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