Hello from Hanoi

We actually made it to Hanoi absolutely smoothly and therefore say hello from Hanoi with the headline 🤩🇻🇳

However, absolutely smoothly also means that the flight was still very exhausting. Unfortunately, we didn't have the most comfortable seats and it was quite warm on the plane 🥵 it was already a taste of the upcoming Asian climate conditions.

Unfortunately, Jeff also paid a price for seat selection. On such a long flight, window seats are not the best choice if the aisle seat is occupied. Then you are always dependent on that person or have to annoy them - the latter was not our strength so far. The Russian woman sitting next to us thanked us for this by actually sending voice messages at the rate of one per second before the flight and listening to the replies out loud. Coline had wished for something like this for the flight 🤣

Otherwise, the service from Aeroflot was excellent and the dinner was really okay for a flight. There was something like semolina porridge for breakfast 🤢

We already met a very nice Vietnamese lady on the plane from Berlin. We also met her regularly in Moscow and she showed us what we can expect. We also noticed that things can get turbulent with the Vietnamese and with the Russian security personnel when boarding the plane: either they had too heavy carry-on luggage or wanted to smuggle too much vodka to Vietnam. So we were approached 3 times whether we could put the vodka in our backpacks - at least that's how we understood it 😅 we remained firm - like the Russian security personnel - 😎

We believe that all passengers still managed to come along.

In Hanoi, friendliness played the main role again: from the man who showed us where and when the bus came, to the person in charge on the bus, to the lady who allowed Coline to take a seat with her, to our fantastic hotelier Ken who overloaded us with information, to the somewhat older coffee seller - we were greeted sooooo warmly ♥️🇻🇳 cảm ơn (Thank you) for that 😍

Now we have written so much and still nothing about our first day 😅😅😅 well, there is no limit to the number of letters, so here it comes now.

When we arrived at the hotel, we could not yet check into our room because we were already there at 11 a.m. The room was not ready for us until around 12:30 p.m. After the many, many pieces of information given by Ken, we went to a café to treat ourselves to an egg coffee. We had never read anything about this specialty in our preparations, but that was not a problem. On the delicious Vietnamese coffee was a creamy sweet egg - ☕️🥚 - if you like it sweet, this is highly recommended.

Then we could finally check into the room and first took a shower and had a rest at noon, as we had hardly slept on the plane.

At around 4:30 p.m., we went out again, because now we were hungry and after all, we are in our culinary paradise 😍🍜🍲🍛🍤🥠🍙🍣 there was a soup called Bun Cha: a strong broth with many unknown yet delicious herbs, and spring rolls filled with pork. So delicious 🥰

Then we strolled further to Ho Hoan Kiem Lake, on which a small temple was located and which was beautifully illuminated in the evening twilight. At this lake, you meet sports enthusiasts: many joggers and there is even a public gym 💪🏽

On the way back, we passed a flower exhibition with overwhelming colors. So many huge orchids make the hearts of plant lovers beat faster!

We will address the typical traffic chaos with hundreds of honking motorcycles in the coming days.

At 8:30 p.m., we were completely exhausted in bed.