Hanoi

What a wild wonderful exciting city Hanoi can be.  It’s alive with energy, history and Indochine glamour. It’s also incredibly noisy, polluted, and dirty.  We spent five nights there and then went out to Halong Bay for a cruise for two nights before returning to Hanoi for another two nights.  We visited the Temple of Literature, saw the Hanoi Water Puppet Show, toured the gauntlet of the Old Town. The second morning Luci and Mark along with us squeezed into a taxi at 6 a.m. and went to a local sports pub to watch the Super Bowl. It was fun cheering our respective teams with the motley crew of Xpats.  We’ve sat on tiny little plastic stools drinking strong Vietnamese coffee, eaten our fair share of Pho and wandered the streets shopping.  We had dinner one night at The Hanoi Social Club, drinking two very well made margaritas apiece and got lost walking back to our hotel, laughing all the way.  Across the street from our hotel we enjoyed strong drinks at Polite, the most beautiful intimate bar in Hanoi.  They played an excellent selection of jazz and blues, had fabulous old time framed photos on the walls and a dark sexy decor.  We sat several floors up in a narrow old coffee shop looking out at the miniature copy of Notre Dame, Saint Joseph’s Cathedral the French had built in the early nineteenth century. St. Joseph is the patron saint of Vietnam. It was so fun to share this experience with our friends! It went by in a flash!