Hiya Hanoi!

If you arrive in Hanoi any time before 10pm, you are welcomed with honking. Lots of honking. Most of the noise is produced by the hundreds of scooters plaguing the streets. I think the city hires most of them to drive around to look like they have a destination. Watch this video taken from our taxi catching a girl fixing her hair and then capturing the onset of scooters desperately wanting to run into us. While you watch, imagine crossing the street on foot, slowly, ever so carefully to avoid being hit.


The headache was intense after a few hours of listening to the traffic communicate in honks. Hanoi is not the place to relax. It is a wonderful town to explore...with a plastic bag on your head. Yes, I said a plastic bag. Ding Dong thought to cheer my spirits by walking the streets with a balloon tied to his wrist and a black plastic bag worn as a hat on his head. We already usurped a plastic string, that would be used to tie a box, and made it our "Mental Midget" necklace, a sort of trophy for saying or doing something stupid. So this Vietnam Team of freaks walked the streets on our second night to get a drink. It was hilarious. If Dinger ever loads his videos and pictures I would show you some beautiful proof. At any rate, we were out. We walked straight into a gay bar and to the back to find a place to stand/dance. Dinger is attacked by a girl pawing for the balloon, which of course he gave to her. She runs back all excited to tell her entourage of gay men and lands the balloon right on a fan...POP! I point at Dinger's head. Dinger understood. Give the girl the plastic bag, blow it up first to replace the helium balloon! Intelligence is here! Hilarious. She loved it. Her entourage adores her and us. We dance, drink and Tony semi-translates. Plus we scored a Fag-Hag and her crew! Yippee! My kind of crowd.

Soon after the bar shuts so we have to move on to a club, on an old boat, off a rickety peer-like walking bridge. The music is pretty tight, the bar and dance floor is packed, but the Hag says it's going to shut and didn't want to pay to go in. Us Americans, we just walk in. I still can't figure out if there was supposed to be a cover, but we just strolled right in. We lost our new friends in the process, which was the saddest part of our trip. We closed that place and were definitely loaded from drinking. Time to go home, except Tony had other plans. Given that he was the only person on the team that speaks Vietnamese, we were stuck with what he communicated to our taxi driver. Trust me, I fought his desire to move on to the next club. Thankfully, I lost. We ended up at the Hanoi Sheraton, the location of a discotheque. As the cab pulls up, Tony hops out and goes straight in the club. We watch a couple of Vietnamese LA-style chics in tight little dresses go in as well. Us, we look like derelicts. (Yeah, yeah... there was a plastic bag on someone's head earlier, doesn't mean we are derels.) So, as Tony, our friend and translator, is gone inside. We walk around to the outside where a beautiful garden awaits us...and a security guard. No worries, we don't look the part but we are good people nothing to show in our bags except... Cakes forgot she had a nearly empty bottle of whiskey in her bag! Doh! That's OK we toss it aside and enjoy the scenery. Shoot, we go inside and enjoy a little more. Crap, I love it so much I get us a room for when we return from Halong Bay. The entire place is well Air Conditioned, the floor sparkles, and someone bought us french fries just because they heard us drunkards wanting some french fries...desperately. I had to get a room! This was heaven after the honks, sweating, and nearly 3 star hotel we called home. We had to hang out in the hotel lobby and play with our Dong. Not Ding Dong, well him too, but our money. The exchange rate from USD to Vietnamese Dong is 1 to 36,000. So we are millionaires. I have so much Dong that Dinger wants to throw it every where. Again, he needs to give up the goods and share some footage.

After causing enough ruckus, we finally returned to Splendid Star. Our newly built dive hotel, I don't recommend it. At Splendid Star, the rooms were quiet (which is a plus) with leaking showers and a charming family in their 30's that run it. The family members are good at making sure you welcomed to their hotel, family, and home. The free breakfast is not the best, although it is nice to sit downstairs to meet other travelers. The Sister of the family hooked us up with our 2 day excursion on a Junk boat in Halong Bay. Our hungover adventure awaits us...