Day 5 - Second Day At Grandparents House + First Day in Hanoi

a cow on our way to Hanoi

At forenoon, we used the time to choose things from our luggage which we would need on our upcoming tour to the center of Vietnam. At this point, we realized that our planning had some faults because we had to leave more things at the grandparents house than we thought, especially clothes. But in the end, we mastered also this task :)

Phồ Yên - Hanoi
After lunch we got into a taxi with large capacity which drove us to Hanoi. The drive itself was about 1.5 hours. Compared to our visit six years before, a lot of things changed. The roads were much better this time because they were real built roads. Six years before, there were only paths. We also saw more houses and shops than before.

Hanoi
Like we remembered, Hanoi is a busy, loud and a little bit dirty city. But let's see what else we discovered:
When we arrived, we took two rooms in a little hotel near the lake "Hoàn Kiếm" which is also called "Lake of the returned sword". It has a little story which I will tell you in the next post :)

Streets of Hanoi

Fashion Store in Hanoi

After the check-in, we went out to discover the streets of Hanoi. One thing is very curios (for me as German): Depending on the street, every shop in this street offers the same kind of product. So for example, we went through a street where only Buddha statues were sold.

 From our hotel we started to explore the fashion stores in our street. To summarize the offer, here a quote from Carina: "Kitschy, blink-blink and many clothes are dowdy" ^^

Maybe the most funniest discovery we made :D

After this discovery, we had lunch with Thảo, the daughter of a friend of my father. She learnt German for going abroad to Germany and I have to say that she spokes good for someone who learns this (complicated) language for only six months. At lunch we ate "Bún" which is a noodle soup with glass noodles, pork and local herbs. You can say, it's the basic food in Vietnam. At least it was for us :D

Church in Hanoi

Inside the Church

Then we explored more shops. Since this time, Carina used her ability to bargain. For example, she bought a scarf out of silk for 200.000 Đồng (VDN) instead of 400.000 VDN. Information: When we were in Vietnam, one Euro was about 26.000 VDN. So you see, the prices weren't that low in Vietnam. We also visited a church but I cannot say if it was catholic or protestant, maybe some of you know it ^^ The church itself was really crowded, so we just went in there for some minutes.

After looking into some more stores, we went to the lake Hoàn Kiếm. What I really like about this lake are the many trees and benches for relaxing. Because it was dark, we saw many colored lights in some trees and also the bridge to the little island with a temple at the lake was lightened in different colors. 

Lights over Hồ Hoàn Kiếm

Streets of Hanoi during Night

Because it was already night, we went to the night market near our hotel. But sudden rain made shopping impossible, nevertheless it inspired Carina and me to a spontaneous singing of songs like "I'm singing in the rain" of Fred Astaire and "Always look on the bright side of life" covered by Monty Python.

At this point I want to thank Carina for being at this journey. Otherwise the journey wouldn't be so great ! :)

My summary of the day: Like expected, Hanoi changed a lot in six years and is now more modern and western. Sadly it remembers me highly of Bangkok. Maybe it is the destiny of all big cities that they will all look the same. I don't know what I expected but in the end of the day I was disappointed of the city. I never felt joy during our first visit here, except during the singing, of course :D

Next time, you will see what happened at the second day in Hanoi.