We made to it Vietnam.

We survived Vietnam and have made it back to Singapore. Vietnam was such a different experience. Hanoi is one crazy city. Coming from Singapore made the comparative chaos of Hanoi even more striking. It also didn't help that we did almost no research and planning for this trip so we didn't know what to expect. Sounds pretty stupid, you say? Yeah, it was. 

Part of the craziness is that it seems like everyone's life is centered around the streets of Hanoi from tiny, compact shops selling anything and everything to food stands and food areas where people sit shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalks on tiny plastic stools slurping pho or drinking whatever alcoholic concoction. 

Everyone is trying to sell you something, or trying to get you to ride in their taxi, motorbike, or bicycle taxi. One guy even came right up to Drew, crouched down and tried to pull off a piece of the rubber from Drew's shoe so that he can glue it back on for him for some money. It was so strange and it took us a bit to realize what was going on.

Hanoi is also known as the city of motorbikes with roughly 4million motorbikes on the road zipping around with only a skeleton of driving laws and guidelines to direct them. If you want to cross the street, you won't ever find a good moment unless you're at one of the very large intersections with stoplights. Otherwise since there is never a good time to cross with the steady stream of motorbikes and cars you basically just start walking, very slowly, and the motorbikes will zip around you. An example from youtube:

It is absolutely terrifying the first couple of times you do it. Drew caught on a lot quicker than I did and a couple of times we'd start crossing, but then I'd hesitate and stop in the middle of the road (which is never a good idea,) and Drew would basically abandon me there as he continued to cross despite my frantically grabbing for his arm. Drew argued that I was going to get him killed too. We don't need to go into what kind of response that got from me.

We survived our first exciting day, and the next day we booked a city tour followed by a two day cruise around Halong Bay. So, there's more to come!