Changing Groups in Hanoi

We reached the final night of the Hong Kong to Hanoi leg of our trip. I missed the final dinner, as had become my habit recently, but the whole group got together in my room later in the evening for a farewell party of sorts. We bought a case of German beer and drank until it was gone. The night lasted until around 1:30 am and a drunk time was had by most.

I got up relatively early the next morning and decided to walk around Hanoi for a little bit. As I had done the day before, I got lost as all get-out in Hanoi. It just turned out to be a difficult city for me to become oriented in. At one point, I walked around for about an hour, including down one street in which I hardly ever saw a car, let alone a cab. I was getting close to checkout time at the hotel and I was getting nervous that I was going to be late. Then, when the street ended and I finally returned to civilization, I looked to my left and saw my hotel. Thank you, Buddha!!!

After getting back to the hotel and checking out, I decided that it was time to go see Uncle Ho. Actually, I wasn’t planning on seeing Uncle Ho because another traveler’s Lonely Planet said that Uncle Ho would be in Russia being renovated in November. I went to Ho’s complex, though, and walked around and took some pictures. The area is sort of a mini-Tiananmen Square in Hanoi.

Close to Ho Chi Minh Land is Chua Mot Cot, also known as the one-pillar pagoda. I don’t really know much about it except that I knew it was the landmark that was on the Hanoi magnet that I had bought earlier in the day, so I had to go see it.

I walked around town for a little longer and then came back to the hotel and met my new roommate. He’s a young guy and he’s from Chile. Looks like I’ll get to practice a little Spanish for the rest of the trip.

Early in the evening, I met the rest of the group that is travelling to Ho Chi Minh City. Unlike my other groups, this is a very young group. There are fifteen people and only three are over forty, with several people in their twenties. This looked like the party crowd that the Chinese portion of the trip was not. But this is a travel blog, not a people blog, so enough about them for now.

I’m pretty sure that we went out for dinner as a group that night. At the time I’m writing this, that night was five nights ago and I just don’t remember. (In retrospect, I now remember having dinner that night. We went to a nice restaurant and I had Bun and Ha Noi beer.) Whatever we did, we weren’t out but so long because we had to check out of the hotel early the next morning for a bus ride to Halong Bay. That seems like it’ll be a good spot to start the next entry, so I’ll go ahead and stop this one here. Later!!