Hanoi- 1st Impressions

It's amazing!!!!! Everyone needs to come and experience it. At this point I think it beats New Zealand after this 1st day.

We are staying in the old quarter of the city and its very chaotic with people selling and walking everywhere as well as scooters and cars driving all directions, at the same time. But the city is fantastic and people are really friendly. Emma says it reminds her of the Montmartre area of Paris. Yesterday we hungout in Old Quarter, visiting a temple on Hoan Kiem Lake and going to the Water Puppet Theatre. We found an excellent modern/traditional properganda poster shop called Dogma and I got a cool T-Shirt.

We went to a great restaurant for lunch, Highway 4, where Emma had soft shell crab. In the UK we get them imported and usually found in chinese supermarkets. Here they were freshwater crabs and looking like mini versions of our brown crabs. They had been boiled and stir fried in chilli and garlic. A very strange experience putting them into your mouth. You can feel their legs and crawls when you bite down. They also had dog, turtle, horse and sparrow on the menu but one step at a time. No adverse stomach problems yet!!!

Today we did Highway 4's traditional cookery course - soft shell crab soup, special fried rice and catfish spring rolls-mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!! It also involved a market visit to buy the ingredients to cook with which is located just outside of our hotel. We then took a cyclo to one of their restaurants where the head chief demostrated what we were going to do before we got on and cooked the dishes which we then ate. mmmmmmmmmmmmm

http://www.highway4.com/

It was great. Afterwards we had their Son Tinh liquor, straight its not great but in cocktails quite nice [so Emma says].

We are exploring the city for the rest of today and tomorrow and then we are off to Ha Long bay and Cat Ba island. I think tonight will be beers and street entertainment.