HANOI

Day 1 – 03.10.2016

The first day of this crazy journey begins. Even though I should have great problems waking up today, it is light outside and I am ready to start the day. To be fair, I was starting out super relaxed as I had a spa treatment book the first thing this morning. I skipped breakfast and dove right into the mad traffic that is Hanoi.

During the night there were less cars and motorbikes around and so the bustle during the day was quite overwhelming – even though I was just in a taxi for 5 minutes.

I arrived at the spa and was adequately pampered with a lovely steam bath, an aromatherapy massage, a coconut scrub, a coconut facial and got all lotioned up for wonderful soft skin.

Lunch was included and I crossed off the traditional Vietnamese soup called Pho Ga (i hope I somewhat spelt it right) which is a chicken soup from my food bucket list. It was a large bowl but because it was so fresh and not overly filling it was a great brunch!

After the spa I chose to walk around town a bit. Slightly afraid of the traffic I developed a system where I would wait for a Vietnamese person to cross the road and then just tag along with them. Later I had enough confidence to know that the motorbikes do go slower and do drive around you. So all you need to do is walk with confidence, watch out for the cars, and keep moving.

I reached a little lake in the centre of Hanoi which was very green. Dont get me wrong, the plants surrounding this little lake were green and lovely, however the lakes colour was a dark green too.

I made it my mission to find a little theatre that specializes in water puppetry. I found the theatre, which was just off the little lake, bought my ticket and sat in the theatre packed with other tourists.

They introduced the orchestra and started playing traditional vietnamese folk music.

This in itself was a great experience, but the water puppetry was spectacular. The puppets seemed to be dancing on the water and even though you couldnt understand the told stories in song in Vietnamese, you could see what was meant and we all laughed in the right places and were amazed by spectacular acts with flying puppets, fighting puppets or just the vivid colours before us.

After the show I still had some time to kill before the meeting with the group and I decided to head out to a small island on the little lake on which they had constructed the Emerald Temple.

It was a beautiful place and my very first Buddhist temple.

It was authentic too as one woman was praying infront of the shrine, a group of old vietnamese men were playing games on the temple terrace and the smell of insence was everywhere.

It is said that a very powerful sword of one of the kings or emperors was tossed into this lake and has buried itself into the ground. Only the large tortoises that appear once in a while „live to tell the story“ of what happened a long long time ago. They even have a display of one of these large tortoises there to tell the tale.

I walked back and marvelled some more at the busy and hectic life of Hanoi. It was really an interesting experience with the traffic passing by you ever so closely. I passed a market and quickly hopped in, only to leave as quickly as I entered overwhelmed by all the plastic merchandise.

I eventually got back to the hotel and waited for the first group meeting. I met my room mate and the first obligatory group meeting took place. They are a lovely bunch! Most of them already know each other, having travelled together through Thailand and Laos the last couple of weeks and now are all heading to Bangkok through Cambodia together.

We decided we would go for dinner in the old quarter and went to a lovely restaurant called Yin and Yang.

It had great vietnamese food and I tried some typical food from Hanoi.