The Northern Loop: Part 1 - Hanoi

The Northern Loop is my blog series about a short motorbike trip in North Vietnam, starting and ending in Ha Giang.

On my previous trip to Vietnam, I rode a motorbike from Saigon to Ha Giang. In Ha Giang, I discovered that I couldn't extend my visa and was forced to go to Laos to get a new Vietnamese Visa. When I returned to Vietnam, I was tired of riding motorbikes and settled down in Da Nang. On this trip, I wanted to finish the Northern Loop. Who better to bring along than my brother and best friend @doctorcrypto?

Getting to Hanoi was no quick trip. We had 3 flights with 4-hour layovers between them. In total, our time in transit was over 24 hours.

An airport in China.

@doctorycrypto with lots of time to kill after our 13 hour flight to China.

We made it through customs in Hanoi without any problems. Our visas were at the airport, waiting for us, and it only took 5 or 10 minutes to get them. We found a taxi and got to our hotel with only one major scam attempt. The taxi driver pulled up to the wrong hotel and someone came out and said, "Welcome to (our hotel name) hotel." I had our real hotel marked on google maps, so I told him to quit bullshitting and I told our driver to keep going.

After dropping off our bags at the hotel, we went to the first beer place that we could find. Luckily, there was a fresh beer place a block or two away from our hotel. Mugs of beer on tap cost roughly $0.44. In LAX, I accidentally bought two Bud Lights for $24! After getting price-gouged so hard in California, we felt it was our duty to drink as much of the 44 cent beer as possible. Isn't there something called "cost averaging"? We couldn't let LAX ruin our average, so we went to town on the cheap beer. For being so cheap, the beer tasted better than most American domestics.

@doctorcrypto at a "Bia Hoi" in Hanoi.

We didn't do much else on the first day in Vietnam.

On the next day, we had some time to kill before catching our bus Ha Giang. We went for a walk around Hanoi. Here are some of the photos.

I love the tiny, busy streets that make up a lot of Hanoi.

This is one of the main tourist streets.

It doesn't matter where you look in Hanoi, it will always seem like there are a million things happening.

A meat display.

A produce vendor using a bicycle to carry her goods.

This apartment was across the street from our hotel. There's a cat in the lower center of the photo. I've only recently realized that there's another cat in the upper right.

@doctorcrypto by a light store.

Some apartments in Hanoi.

I don't usually go to very many tourist attractions when I travel solo, but with time to kill and someone else with me, we decided to go see some attractions. Here are some of the things that we saw.

There was a temple close to our hotel, so we went there first.

Fruit is a common offering at the temples in Vietnam.

I believe these are offereings for fallen soldiers.

There was a big Christian church that we saw, so we stopped in for a few photos.

After the church, we walked to the "One Pillar Pagoda". It wasn't very impressive for a tourist attraction, but it was still kind of cool. It was also located close to other attractions.

@doctorcrypto and @fronttowardenemy.

An offering at the one pillar pagoda.

The fruits are budda-hands and (I think) tangerines.

There were some cool little trees at the pagoda.

Close to the pagoda is the Ho Chi Minh museum.

The Ho Chi Minh museum.

We went to a park that had a ton of birdhouses on an island.

I'm not sure what this is all about.

On our way back to the neighborhood where our hotel was located, we passed this big city gate. The sign said that the holes were made with French guns when they fought the Vietnamese.

These kinds of arches are fairly common in Vietnam.

A Vietnamese flag over a street.

On our way back to our neighborhood, we stopped at a great restaurant. I got fried morning glories and they were excellent. I can't remember what @doctorcrypto got. The restaurant did have dog on the menu, but neither of us wanted to try it.

We got back to our hotel and killed time until our bus picked us up. We didn't know it then, but the "sleeper bus" would turn out to be a horrible way to transport people taller than 5 feet. I'll save my sleeper bus complaints for the next post. Until then, ride safe!