First days in Vietnam

After our one-hour flight from Laos, we finally arrived in Hanoi. The city is absolutely crazy. Whether it's positive or negative, we're not quite sure =)

From the airport to the city, we took the local bus and it took 1.5 hours, stuck in the midst of heavy traffic. Here, the hustle and bustle is a bit more modern, with everyone moving around on small motorbikes. It feels like there are more scooters than people in this city. It's incredibly exhausting to even cross the street without getting run over. The scooters come from the right, left, front, and back. Thankfully, we're a group of four and always cross the street together, so we're a bit 'bigger'. We met Chiara and Marvin at the airport and now plan to travel through Vietnam together.

Luckily, we only planned to spend one day in Hanoi. In the morning, we strolled through the city and to a beautiful lake. The great thing was that the streets around the lake were closed off, so no scooters were allowed to drive there.

Afterwards, we went to a water puppet theater. The dancing puppets on the water and the Asian music accompanying them were a bit strange but still interesting to see. After three quarters of an hour, we had seen enough and were glad we didn't have to listen to the Asian singing any longer.

On our way through the city, we came across a group of pink dancing plush elephants who were apparently advertising a laundry detergent... Yeah, Asians are indeed a bit different, but also very funny!! =)

In the evening, we took a stroll through the obligatory night market and Chiara and I thoroughly enjoyed walking through the many small stalls with female company, while Jonas and Marvin had fun haggling with the Vietnamese for some electronic items and having a few beers.

The highlight of the day, however, was the train that passed right behind our hostel. Not particularly exciting in itself... but the train tracks led directly through a row of houses. There was only about a meter of space on either side of the houses. We walked along the tracks and were fascinated that people's lives basically revolve around the tracks. Just as we were about to leave, a friendly man warned us to be careful because a train was coming soon. We heard the train's horn in the distance and rushed to the walls and found a spot next to a small bush. The space should be enough and the train will definitely be very slow... No way!! The train thundered by at a relatively fast speed, and as I said, we were only about a meter away from the train and pressed against the wall. The feeling was incredible =) You have to be a little bit daring to live here... and you absolutely must know the train schedule by heart!!