Hanoi, Vietnam

Landed in Hanoi this morning! first impressions:
-people do actually wear those cool cone hats here!
-only saw 3 motorbike accidents in our first 2 hours in Vietnam! (thats actually amazing considering the traffic etiquette)

seriously, the traffic is unbelievable! to cross the street you're suppose to walk directly into oncoming traffic and let the hundreds of motorbikes swerve around you. its really scary at first but i'm loving the adrenaline rush now lol

a random coincidence: Joey was talking about how hard is must be for a blind person to get around in Hanoi, and about 10 minutes later we witness a parked motorbike crashing to the floor, glass coke bottles breaking that were attached to the back, and a man with a white stick being directed away from the scene!
we also stumbled upon a live concert on the street this evening which was pretty cool, traditional vietnamese song and dance.

Day 2: Took a row boat ride down a river to some temples in caves, very scenic and cool.

Day 3: Welcomed Holly to Hanoi who zipped through Laos to meet up with us. That night we went to one of the infamous street corner "Bia Hoi" (draft beer) places which are just a family run beer garden on the street basically with each beer being 1500 Dong! thats about 11 cents Canadian. Needless to say it was a very fun night and got some really great insight into Vietnamese culture from an american guy Josh from Wisconsin who married a Hamong woman here (minority group) and has been living in Vietnam for 4 years.

Day 4-5: Did an amazing overnight boat trip through Halong bay, so picturesque! To sum up Vietnam so far with ABC i'd say; Amazing, Beatiful, and Corrupt. hehe wow, for one, our hotel charged us a "government tax" which we found out doesn't exist and is a fairly common practice with hotels here. our cleaning lady the other day also noted we'd taken 3 bottles of water from our room's bar fridge and told us she was going to replenish them and for us to pay her directly half price for them and not tell the front desk! lol many people in the tourism industry here seem to be obsessed with money alot more so than the surrounding countries we've visited but yes thats quite the generalisation. we've had some really cool tour guides though that were incredibly easy to relate to and talk with. we're gonna be sleeping on buses the next 3 nights woo! stay tuned
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