"The city of celebrations"

Hanoi has a lot of celebrations going on at the moment, and I am very happy I got the time to see some of them. The city is celebrating 1000 years old, the Communist party is celebrating its 80th anniversary, Chinese New Year was coming up and some of the guys in my hostel were celebrating their birthdays. The city is rigged with lights, lanterns, thousands of communist flags, pictures of Ho Chi Minh, and actually various Buddhist ceremonial rituals on every street corner. All a big contrast to each other.

Walking around in the streets is a lot of fun, not mentioning the crazy traffic, there are all kinds of restaurants and cafés spread out over the sidewalks. Many of these are portable to that degree that one person with the long bamboo stick with ropes in both ends can carry the whole thing, included stools and cooking devices.

All of the street vendors like these are women, and they carry all kinds of things, and a lot of them carry so heavy I that they need to walk in the same rhythm as the baskets are bouncing in to not collapse. The ones that are not carrying the restaurants are not allowed to stop anywhere, so they keep walking the entire day. But as you can see in one of my photos, even the police stop them to buy fruit, so I guess they can get away with settling down on the sidewalk every once in a while. Vietnam is for sure a very corrupt country, and you can tell by the government officials, making the communist flat rate salary, driving Bentleys and BMW X6 all around town. There is no way that their salary could have paid for one of those, not even in 500 years. There are more Bentleys to see on the streets of Hanoi than in San Francisco.

I bet those Bentley drivers are living a pretty sweet life here in Vietnam, considering the low costs of living. In the evenings most people form the hostel go to the "Bía Hoi", the beer corner. There are actually many of them, not just one, and some are cheaper than others, but the price for a glass of beer is usually from 3000 VND (0.20 USD / 1 NOK) to 5000 VND. There is no news that Asian people can not handle alcohol very well, and people are definitely drunk here, but it is not as bad as in China, where everyone were vomiting all over the streets. Walking down the streets of Beijing early in the morning was always great coordination training, trying to step in between the countless "vomit-ponds".

After 11 in the evening, the streets start clearing off, and after midnight, they are empty. Only the drug dealers, the motorbike taxies and the tourists are out. Here, as anywhere else, there is a black market; the one that is not listed in any guidebooks. It is usually on every corner, although, some are more open about it than others. All day long there are young boys walking the streets with guidebooks for almost every country in this region. These are illegal copies, but they are good photocopies, and many of them are hard to tell is not real. These same boys also walk around with the same books at night, except they are not selling books, but marihuana. If you say "no", they say "opium", and so on. They do walk away when they know you don't want any though, so it is not unpleasant at all. The other taste you get of the black market is the currency market. In Vietnam it is illegal to sell USD in Vietnam, I guess it is because the mafia is run by it, and that the government wants to keep as much foreign currency as possible in the country, both for trade and because of the inflation ridden Dong. The consumer prices have increased by more than 24 % in 2009, with the record of over 27% in July, and the curve does not look like it is slowing down at all. They do have a foreign currency transfer here, but they do of course not sell USD. So close to the ATMs outside many banks often used by tourists there are girls on motorbikes who sell USD at a rate about 12 % above the real market price, if that had excited. You are better off going to the jewelry stores. Many of them sell USD, and at a better rate than you get on the street. I did bank up on some US, so that I have for the boarder crossing to Lao ($30) and some for backup, if I should need it.

When I got back from Ha Long Bay, on a Sunday, I wanted to leave Hanoi, going south in Vietnam, as fast as I could. But after dinner with Jiby and Pedro (I met them on the boat) I started looking around to see if I could find someone who wanted to go with me to Laos in stead. From all the people I have met, everyone has only great stories to tell about Lao, and Jiby convinced me I had to go. I found that Mohan, an English man with an Indian parent was going the same way, but not before Friday. I decided to wait for him, and as the days passed an Australian, Paul, and Jared, my room mate from the boat joined in too, and we managed decided to leave Thursday evening instead.

This gave me a lot more time in Hanoi than I have had in any other city, but since the city was nice, the people were cool, and the hostel was great, I did not mind at all.

The temperatures have been around 27 C / 80 F, and luckily there has not been too much sun here. I definitely needed some lighter clothes, but finding it turned out to be more difficult than I had expected. Sandals were my first priority, but for some reason my size is not that common here in Vietnam. So after visiting the shoe street, with at least hone hundred shoe stores, I had still not found any sandals that were big enough. A little later, I was lucky and did find a pair, and bought them on the spot, even if I got ripped off; I paid about 5 USD. After a week of walking, I have still not found any proper shorts and I have to do with rolling up my pants, but the sandals are holding up. And I do have a pair of swim shorts that I bought in Ha Long City.