Vietnam - Applause Applause

Three hours after barely making our flight in Singapore, as we were stuck in the subway there, and sank into our seats with sweat on our foreheads, we are standing in the arrival hall of Hanoi airport. Actually, a chauffeur with our name tag should be standing here, taking us directly to the hotel. Actually. We walk heavily laden out of the building and behold, there is the person we are looking for. Unlike expected, however, this person is not our driver but only a middleman, who signals us with hands and feet to wait here until another person picks us up. Unlike expected, it is also very cold in Hanoi. Not that we expected the humid 30 degrees from Singapore, but the lousy cold here is still surprising. We take the jackets out of our backpacks and wait and wait and wait.

Then he stands in front of us, our driver. But where is his car? He apologizes that he had to park further away and so we follow him with our bags and baggage.

The path leads us through dense crowds with all kinds of Vietnamese flags, drums and honking. A demonstration? Far from it: the Vietnamese national football team is expected to return from a tournament and their second place is celebrated like a first.

All of this is nice to look at, but we are tired and want to quickly get to the hotel.

1.5 hours later we are still sitting in the car and haven't moved a meter from the airport parking lot, because the footballers' moving truck is bathing in the cheering crowd and moving at a snail's pace. After another 1.5 hours we arrive at the Old Town Hotel in Hanoi. Done.

Giang, our personal receptionist for the next few days, gives us a detailed introduction to the gastronomy and sightseeing spots of the city before taking us to our room. In the evening, we explore our neighborhood, the Old Town, a little bit and eat our first Ban Mih. These are filled baguettes, which are usually filled with salad, sprouts, cilantro, chili, meat and a mix of various sauces. A delicious dinner that we will choose more often.

The Old Town is a bustling place. Life takes place on the street, the ground floor of every house is either a street restaurant or a shop, all without doors, all close together. Every corner is colorful, full of smells, full of people, and we are constantly being run over by a herd of scooters and wonder that we are still alive. Almost every second a new impression shoots up to us, rushes past and the next one is already coming. Sometimes we don't even know where to look.

We are positively surprised by the breakfast selection the next morning, from pancakes to yogurt to Vietnamese noodle soup (typical breakfast), they have everything here. A stark contrast to our toast with peanut butter or chocolate spread in Singapore.

So we can start our tours well fortified every morning.

On the first day we visit the Tran Quoc Pagoda. From there we walk along the ...lake towards the HoChiMin Mausoleum. It is surrounded by yellow government buildings and well guarded on a long parade street, attracting tourists as well as locals. A woman who starts waving her Vietnam flag enthusiastically is immediately reprimanded by the surrounding soldiers. Before we behave the same, we continue to the Temple of Literature. We expect to see a kind of library. Not at all. It consists of five consecutive courtyards through which the king, his staff, teachers and students strolled and exchanged ideas. A university of sorts, only without lecture halls and with a small armada of stone turtles carrying a stone with carved poems on their shells.

The next day we take a leap in time and explore the more recent history of Vietnam, which is particularly connected to the colonial power of France. For example, the French built one of their most feared prisons in Vietnam in Hanoi, the Hoa Lo Prison ( macabrely also known as Hanoi Hilton), where several thousand (?) political opponents were held prisoner for a time.

Meanwhile, Giang, our lovable receptionist, has exchanged numbers with Lisa. So we are scheduled to have lunch together and are looking forward to seeing and tasting a bit of Giang's culinary Hanoi. We go to one of the classic street kitchens, where we eat delicious fried tofu, meat and rice noodles on mini plastic chairs. Only the typical shrimp sauce, which is served for dipping, is not Sebastian's culinary highlight. Giang has to go back to the hotel and we need coffee. But we are in the right place in Hanoi, because there are big and small, traditional and trendy cafes on every corner. We follow a recommendation from Lisa's friend Laura and go to Cong Caphe, where there is an incredibly good coconut coffee smoothie, absolute addicting! But they also have delicious Vietnamese black coffee here, which infuses energy for the rest of the day.

After these first impressions, we also want to explore rural Vietnam. Therefore, our path leads us to Sapa, just a few hours from Hanoi, in the north of the country. There, a completely different world awaits us...