From Tropical and Warm to Freezing Cold! --Hanoi, Vietnam

The night before we left the island of Koh Tao we decided to head out to a party island on the main side at a club called Moov where they had flown in a couple of UK Dj's. The party and DJ's were actually quite good. After several sangsom buckets (basically a small bottle of Thai rum emptied into a bucket of Coke and a squeeze of Lime) I was dancing my tush off with a slight worry in the back of my head about sleep since basically we had booked ourselves one last dive trip to Shark Island leaving at 7:15 am. This means our schedule for the next day looks like this:



we party until past 1am,
check out of hotel by 7am,
dive until 12:30pm- eat-
catch island taxi to boat @ 2pm,
boat to mainland leaves 2:45pm
train to BKK from Chumpon leave at 8:30pm
Arrive in BKK- 6am



ugh... so I've just set myself up for little sleep for the next 2 days. Luckily my 4 years of Burning Man experience has taught me how to pull this off and still maintain some social nicities even when groggy and sleepy.





So after we left the islands and chartered a fast boat to Chumpon where we waited for the night train to take us back to Bangkok. During this time we strolled down the street with our backpacks and camped out under the tarps of local street vendor's shanty shacks of delicious "Yaam Talay" or Seafood ceviche mixed with mint, cilantro, chilli, lime, fish sauce and a couple other local herbs.




It was a most delicious meal, and perfect before we got back on the (roach infected FAN ONLY ) night train where Oliver proceeded to have dreams of roaches biting him all night.









Back to Bangkok for lunch with my Aunt, Na Jad at a Dim Sum buffet (Aunt and Oliver pictured here) an evening out with an old friend from Korea, and we were off again on another plane....


Then we arrive in a freezing cold Hanoi, Vietnam! (The land where everything is transported by motorbike....




....Like ORANGE TREES!!!






......And BAGS OF GOLD FISHES!


(orange trees and gold fishes, huh? yeah it's Tet/Chinese New Year alright!)


Oh man! A couple days before coming here we received a warning email from Oliver's Mother about the weather. Thank goodness for that email since non of us had thought to check the weather! (And I should of learned my lesson since the last time i came to Vietnam it was Feb. and just as cold if not more!)





After about an hour at the airport of getting our Visas on arrival we then headed to check-in at the Camellia 4 at the Old-Quarter of Hanoi. Wow... this place was the nicest place I had stayed in possibly during this entire trip! It by far was the nicest I had been in in Hanoi. Hell, Right now I a typing to you on a computer that came with the room w/ frree wi-fi.HOrray!

Super clean, warm puffy comforter, great service staff and funny Viet TV! Apart from the lack of heat here (as in every building in Hanoi since no one is use to this super cold weather) this place was alright. After a check in, we then headed out into the Chaos to find some hot soup, some delicious Viet-Sandwiches and to see some Water Puppet Theater in action!

I had already been to Hanoi once with my friend Wakx and thus had seen most of the important awesome sights i.e. the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (this is a must see! super awesome history museum too! It makes you LOVE Uncle Ho!) as well as the lovely Temple of Literature. So my objective for our only day in Hanoi was: TO EAT!!! When I was here before I felt that apart from random street stalls I did not specifically find local specialty dishes as much as in other parts of Vietnam, and since my main objective in travel is to eat and sample different foods (whether I may admit it or not out of shame) I felt I couldn't let my stomach down a second time in Hanoi.

...and boy the hotel staff were helpful! They gave me a map, circled places I should go to eat, and off we went on my treasure hunt of gluttony!