Hanoi, Vietnam

After an, let's go with interesting, bus ride from Nanning, China to Hanoi, Vietnam, I finally arrived at my intended destination. I had been in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan for nearly all of the 90 days of my Chinese visa and it felt weird to be in a completely different place.

What grabs you first about Vietnam is the driving. While still in China I had decided that I was going to buy a motorbike and ride from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City (or HCMC, formerly Saigon) in the south. This is a very common route and buying a motorbike to make the trip is something many backpackers do. After crossing the boarder into Vietnam I almost immediately changed my mind. The driving here is madness. Cairo, Egypt gets close, but in my experience so far this is the craziest I have seen. What makes the driving here more hectic than Cairo is the heterogeneous makeup of the vehicles on the road. In Cairo it is almost all cars. Here there are more motorbikes than anything, but also a ton of bicycles and still plenty of cars. Also, as far as I can tell, there are no laws. Seriously. The only police I have seen in Vietnam are tourist police (basically there to help tourists and keep them in line) and only a few other cops that were literally sleeping.

Hanoi is a cool city with a good vibe. It is compact enough to walk around and, at least when I was there, the weather was pleasant enough that walking was nice. There are a few good museums and a couple of nice lakes and a handful of other attractions. Nothing is outstanding or a must-see, in my opinion, but there is plenty worth seeing. The best thing to do in Hanoi is just roam around exploring the character (and characters) of the city or sitting outside at some "cafe" sipping on some of the world's least expensive beer while people watching.