Hanoi Hanoi Hanoi…Hanoi at night

Capital of Vietnam,  Mother of Bun Nam Bo salad and city of too many lakes,

from your disgusting street food stalls to your other awesome finds,

from your charming architecture to sometimes being a bit behind in basic infrastructure,

from your hipster coffee shop to your street mobile butcher bikes,

from your cheap branded knockoffs backpacks to your fake Aquafina water bottles,

from your low quality locally brewed beer to your delectable egg coffees,

from crazy daytime traffic to the sleepiest capital of SE Asia,

from your fancy hair salons to your street barbershops,

from honest and kind people to annoying and persistent street scammers,

Hanoi you surprised and startled me at the same time!

I will remember your “banh mi” for 15 000 dong, your amazing beef and mint salad for 60 000 dong and your Tiger beer cans for 15 000 dong.

I will hope those digits won’t inflate as fast as it did during the last quarters nor that it doubles as in the last 2 years.

I  hope that your 70% of population (farmers) won’t starve because of those careless Western and Japanese tourists bringing the inflation rate up with their lack of bargaining and over tipping.

I  hope that the government doesn’t pass the bill making illegal the old men pedaling their rickshaws giving rides across town to those fat Americans. I hope they will still be able to earn a modest living from charging them more than the least honest taxi around.

I will hope that this guy…

finds his life calling and stops trying to steal people shoes and asking for ransom.

That this woman finds a better way than scamming poor naive tourists into paying 100 000 dong for a picture of them with the basket after sneakily putting it on their shoulder without their approval..

I hope that the lady forcing her disgusting rice sweets in the hands of people will learn how to bake or speak a little English.

I hope that the street merchants negotiating items to 15000 dong realize that they can’t just expect people to pay 50 000 once it’s in the bag claiming their English isn’t that great.

I also hope that the kind people I met stay kind and that others get inspired.

I hope that the guys I was working out with at sunrise at the popup gym next to the lake stay healthy and continue this awesome initiative.

Hanoi, Hanoi, Hanoi… I love you despite your little “Hanoï-ances”!

A little bit of poetry to illustrate my mixed feelings about Hanoi. A place where the average man is wearing a dress shirt and where night life pretty much means families gathering in parks to play with their kids. Hanoi has everything to charm a young couple like us. It’s beautiful. People can be nice or total con artists, but isn’t it like that everywhere anyway ?

Maybe we’ll stop there again sometimes. 😉

Thanks for reading. I’m preparing a blog post about our cruise to Halong Bay and our stay on the island of Cat Ba. Anything you would like to know? Feel free to comment and share. 😉