Hanoi Old Quarter - Sunshine Palace Hotel. A suite for $40/night includes a shower with 2 nozzles, a steam/sauna option and music with synchopated disco lighting. Newly refurbished hotel includes a computer in every room with Internet access. Laundry is done in 4 hours for $1 a basket. (India was $20 for laundry). So hotel room is 25% of India's prices and at or above US standard.
Dinner at Bar69:
Gin and Tonic is $2.50 (India was $12.50 and so we had beer while there).
Wonton Dumpling soup $1.50
Ha Noi style pork sour soup. $1.50
Vietnam style stir fried beef with celery $4.09
Steamed Duck Breast with O Mai (Dried Apricots and Plums). $4.09
Fried banana and orange sauce.
Total about $20
US$1= 20,000 Dong so when we go to an ATM for cash we have type in 2,000,000 Dong and I am scared of typing so many zeros.
We are all jealous of the cafes of Paris, and the English and the Americans at least don't have that but the Asians live on the street. Food is cooked and eaten on the pavement (ie sidewalk), a pig is being chopped up, live fish are in oxygenated tanks, a chicken in a cage is being fed her breakfast, and the dishes are being washed. Meals are eaten while at children's sized tables and chairs. Usually it's not possible to walk on the pavement for more than a few feet and so you have to walk in the road along with hundreds of mopeds. The Vietnamese will make something edible from any ingredient. Street-side food production is scattered amongst lots of small businesses: keys are cut; hair is cut and styled; pots and pans are being made. An old lady with a staggering amount of wicker baskets full of flowers for sale comes cycling by and the moped riders stop (in the middle of the street) and buy from her before heading off home from work. So the street is an extremely busy and noisy social scene packed with wall to wall people and traffic. In our California town we are proud and thankful for our Starbucks and it's two umbrellas and few chairs for the chance to drink coffee outdoors. Our automatic garage door in California opens and the driver leaves for the shopping mall, probably talks a few words to the check-out person and then drives home and disappears once again behind that garage door. So we speculate that many Asians (Including Indians and Egyptians) would regard our towns as disconcertingly quiet, lifeless, soulless and without color.
Mopeds outnumber cars at least 100 to one. Once again all street rules are ignored. Mopeds are parked nose to tail across the pavements pushing pedestrians into the street. Doesn't matter, any available open pavement (sidewalk) would be used by a moped anyway. Many bikes and cars don't have their lights on at night and I have no idea why. When a lady on an unlit moped surprises me I tap her headlight and she then turns it on.
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