Boli goes Vietnam: From Ninh Binh to Hanoi and around

Since I am tomorrow leaving with the early morning flight to Hue in the South I had to come today back to Hanoi – an easy 2 hours bus ride from Ninh Binh – co nothing special in that case. But may be the trip to the hotel was. I got off at the bus station, which is about 7 km away from the city centre and I thought about getting a moto for the fun. I was asked immediately at the bus station, with a price mentioned of 100.000 Dong equal to 5 USD for a ride, far too much, so I walked just outside the bus station and the same ride cost only 40.000 Dong 2 Dollar – pretty cool pricing strategy. So time my big backpack was between the drivers legs and the small on my back and off we go. Cool riding – by the way we bypassed a football rolling around on a 5 lane street right in the middle – wander how it got there.

The rest of the day I spend wandering around in Hanoi finding some hidden temples or Christmas curiosities. By the way the original plastic Snowman is made here in Hanoi.

Then I had to taste some local beer. Actually the Czech brought the brewing tradition to Hanoi and you can get local brewed beer as cheep as 5000 Dong equal to 0,25 cent per glass – so you have to control your drinking habit. Before I got too drunk I even played Badmintonvv with the local on the street, since they just arrange nets on the sidewalk and play – it was good fun – though pretty swetty.

For the evening I bought tickets for the famous water puppet show – 30 cm large puppets are played below a water surface by humans and it is really cute to look at.

So now I have to got to bed to catch my flight at 9 am next morning.

Markus