super bike in hanoi

Finally got some time to dig my messy photo filling and look what I found!
The super motorbike in Hanoi. I remember the risk I took for this picture, see the silver car on the right? That car almost hit me while I took this picture but really, that was daily risk for each and every pedestrian lives in Hanoi (or whoever take a walk on the street). I'm not exaggerating, just look at the size of whatever red thing on the back of the bike (it's a drum by the way).

Souvenir shops

We live in the middle of the tourist area, the old quarter. Stepping out from our house are all kind of souvenir shops. From wooden bowls, paintings, clothing shop, lanterns ... all the typical tourist souvenirs. One of the nice thing to live in a tourist area is no one will point their finger at you and giggle just because you are a foreigner.


Here, dealing (and bargaining) with foreigner is their everyday meal, it minimize my use of hand signal but not without a price. We mostly end up paying a bit more, thanks to my poor ability in speaking numbers in vietnamese. I found it necessary to master the very-very basic of shopping vocabulary :

how much? - bao nhiêu?
numbers! 1-10 and 10.000 - 100.000

The rest? Hand signal ... no fuss

Hanoi is a place where you can shop for the house. Nicely painted wooden bowls starts from 1USD and the big one is about 3USD. Hmm, still hard to estimate the price? here's an easy way to get a grip of the price, 1 pack of Marlboro cigarette cost 15000VND, that's less than 1USD.

Sending stuff from Vietnam (not just Hanoi) is pretty easy. The cheapest is to send it with the 3 months shipping, it might take a bit long but imagine being back home with lots of package arriving, it's gonna be your own personal christmas day. My friend send back his 20kg stuff with the 3 moths shipping to UK for 60USD, the trick is to pack it in 1 huge box and send it to yourself to avoid higher charges and tax.

The bridge of sound

As I wrote on the previous post, I was dragged to an art performance but left my camera home.I succeed in finding some picture and detail report of the event from Hanoi grapevine blog

They build an impressive construction, bridges, bamboo jungle and most were light up with spot lights. There was some spot light shot up to the night sky, something rarely seen in Hanoi.
But nothing is perfect, they ruined it by playing earsplitting live music with some shouting, screaming singers. oh. not all singers shouted, some are good and really did try to sing artistically.

Before the night end, I was already too tired expecting for a good solid performance and ended up with beers and a slight disappointment

but after all ...

"arts, in all of its many forms, can sometimes be .. confusing"

Special thanks for Dao Anh Khanh for inviting us to the closing party, I couldn't be more than grateful drinking those fresh beer and rice wine at the end of the night.

photo courtesy of Hanoi grapevine blog

another hop?

last nite, after feeding Bouh with huge hamburger (which disappeared in less than 7 minutes, it's magic!?) I succeed in fishing out the ugly fact of our nomad year...
We might soon have to move to another country...
We've been in Hanoi for only a month, I just re-new my visa, pronounce bao nhiêu? (how much?) to an understandable level, we also live close to the hoan kiem lake, it's very picturesque ... damn beautiful ... and suddenly there's this news that we have to move again.

We thought that we are prepared for this nomad year but we also know that there's a motorbike we left in Indonesia in the hand of our good friend-hoping they will find time to dust it or sell it, our 20kg bag left in our ex-housemate's house in Saigon,our 50kg mail-package from Indonesia hasn't arrived in Hanoi yet and to top it all we paid our Hanoi house for 3 moths rent. so .. WOW!
This morning I've been wracking my brain trying to find solution on how to do this move but
on the other hand, I'm excited with this move, the rumour says that we're going to move to Thailand, only for a month or so .. but Thailand .. ever hear about the Thailand food? Tom Yum, Pad Thai, fried moth/eels/scorpion (okay maybe not that ... ), spring rolls, curry ... oh, i can go on and on with the list!so maybe .. in a week or so, I'll write this blog from Thailand, sipping coconut juice and munching fried scorpion ...
let's see ...
but in the meanwhile ... let us enjoy hanoi :

Oh My Beer!

Hanoi is famous with its microbrewery, fresh beers are sold in Bia Hoi, night stalls are scattered on every corner of the old quarter street. 10usd in your pocket will pay for a night out squatting on a small chair, sipping glass after glass of beer while watching the crazy motorbike drivers dodge pedestrian on the street.
In almost every Bia hoi, a glass of fresh beer cost 3000VND (16 cent!!!), your 10USD can buy you 62 glasses, so please try not to use the whole 10USD unless you are planning to have a beer bath in your bathtub.

(Oh, wow, why i haven't done that ..?!).

My housemate swore that he found a Bia hoi with 2500VND/glass, the cheapest in the town. I told him that if it gets any cheaper than that, we should probably check whether we are still alive or are we actually already in beer-heaven.

Sipping beers on street corners seems fun and adventurous but there's always a day when you just want to snuggle on the couch, watching movies and drinking beers. It never occurred to me that I could doggy-bag the beers!

yesssh, a fresh bottle of beer, bia tuoi, for 15000VND!



hello .. is this beer heaven? am I .. still .. alive?