After a 4 hour journey from Halong Bay... We finally reached Hanoi City... The Capital City of Vietnam... Wow... The city looks kinda run down... Traffic was horrible too.. Walk as you wish. No traffic lights, zebra crossings are for show. Jaywalking is guaranteed.
Its pretty scary actually, but be safe, walk slowly and you know.... its like walking in a shopping centre in Singapore... you give way like under normal circumstances... car comes 1st give way to car.... pedestrain reach road first, pedestrain... and the motorists are pretty courteous.. they dont bang into you, or rather, seldom... their cars drive like 30km/h in the city. LOL...
They love to horn a lot. But they are just trying to warn you that they are coming. So that you wun bang onto the car. We almost went back deaf... lol.. noise pollution is too high in Hanoi City.
TIPS TO JAYWALKING:
Relax and don't run. Just walk slowly and steadily. The cars will give way to you. If you run, they do not know how to avoid you and just bang onto you.
Anyway, had a trishaw ride there... paid the trishaw uncle RMB10 (SGD$2) instead of the usual RMB5... cos I know its hard on him... my weight. you know you know... 1 hour ride...
Anyway, its pretty challenging to see how they just ride across a 4 way junction without the need to stop. Just ride across as you wish, as you can see from the video.. Surely it scares the hell out of you on the trishaw ride, as you are in front and the uncle just cycles across a 4 way junction with cars and scotters driving right in front of you.
Anyway, my mum's trishaw uncle was horrible.. had 2 minor accidents.... my mum got a shock out of her life. LOL... and he scolded the car owner for not giving way to him... and one was a scooter... my mum was like -_-" ...
Overall, the ride was good enough to let me see the facades of Vietnamese life.. They are just simply simply relaxed people living in the world of the 1960s.... Buying bread from the roadside, being traditional in their thinking... eating on the roadside, squatting down and eating....
economical rice is like having 4 big basins of dishes and den using chopsticks to pick on the dishes you want to eat like a buffet style... sharing with strangers..... but without a common chopstick.
Hotel soup noodles is like having the chef tasted the soup from the ladle and then putting it back into the soup after its deemed to be good to be served.... LOL... as one of the uncles travelling with us saw the hotel chef doing it.. was like... -_-"...
Last but not least, the day ended with a water puppet show in Hanoi City.. Not bad... but was tired.. and almost dozed off...
