Merry Christmas from Hà Nội!

Busy streets, Hanoi, Vietnam

Our very friendly and helpful hotel manager

Hanoi was a lot of fun and I'm glad we went there a day early so we had four days in total. It gave us an opportunity to have some downtime. For the first time we were able to sleep in one morning and it felt amazing, you'd think I was on holiday! The biggest contrast to Halong Bay was the difference in service. We got to our hotel but because we were a day early we didn't have a booking for the night and the hotel was fully booked. Instead of sending us back out on the street they went out of their way to find a solution, which ended up being putting us up in their more luxurious sister hotel for all 4 nights for the same price, paying for our taxi, and escorting us there!

It is actually not a very big city so the central touristy part including the French and old quarters of the city were easy to explore on foot which was nice, as long as you manage to avoid getting hit by the thousands and thousands of mopeds! The traffic was worse than anywhere I have seen before and they had no respect for pedestrians, none whatsoever. Don't expect them to stop to give you an opportunity to cross, you just have to take a leap of faith and do it. The way to avoid getting run over was to keep walking at a constant pace so the drivers could estimate where you'd be in order for them to drive around you - and not to suddenly stop, change direction or run! Also the honking was just as bad as on the drive to Halong Bay, so because I could hear it all around me near and far, left and right, I soon stopped reacting to any of it.

As you might expect from a city with this level of traffic, the air was extremely polluted. So much so that when it was sunny you couldn't actually see the sun through the cloud of pollution. As an ex-smoker I was very surprised at how much the bad air affected me; I actually felt I was running out of oxygen breathing in the exhaust fumes.

Christmas decoration in the Catholic Church, Hanoi, Vietnam

I am not going to lie, being away from home at Christmas did make me miss my family, the snow, the Christmas feel, and my mom's Christmas cooking a lot and I was quite sad to be so far away. Promised myself to make sure I'm home next year! Went to visit a Catholic Church, and they sure had made an effort for Christmas. Outside the church was a Belén in true Spanish style, but I think they had taken parts from different ones to make it as Baby Jesus was twice the size of the three wise men combined, and one of the sheep must have been a mutant as it was so big it didn't even fit in the shed. The church on the inside was full of Christmas props including several fully decorated Christmas trees! That was a first!

We met a couple of expats who explained that life in Hanoi wasn't very much fun. They said there wasn't much to do, bars closed early, nightlife was not exciting, and as a foreigner it was difficult to integrate so you end up feeling like an outsider. The only reason they stayed was because work paid well. One of them was working for a clothing manufacturer and at 26, he was earning more than double what he would have made in Germany. He was sent to Hanoi to run one of the factories in the countryside where the clothes were sewn and he was overseeing over 1,000 people most of them making about $100 a month. Apparently corruption is extremely widespread. The police will stop you on the road for no reason and make up a violation unless you pay them, and the same happens every month with businesses - they will revoke your business licence unless you pay the police when they do their routine visit.

I'm struggling ever so slightly with the various currencies and exchange rates. What's worse, I am actually finding it very difficult to get my zeros right. Having worked in finance for five years I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it but it's true, just the other day I offered to pay a ten-fold price for my coffee. Talking of which, gross coffee in Vietnam by the way and it is apparently one of the biggest exporters of coffee in the world! Who drinks it??

Street life, Hanoi, Vietnam

Vietnam may be a poor country but people in Hà Nội look very happy to me. They seem to spend a lot of time socialising on the street. They sit on these small plastic chairs on the pavement (wherever they can fit between the parked mopeds) gathered around small tables nibbling on sunflower seeds, eating street food and having a seemingly good time. Seems like a good and comfortable lifestyle!

As much as I have loved the northern part of Southeast Asia, I am ready for my beach holiday now. Stay tuned, the pool and the cocktails are almost within reach.

Graduation ceremony, Hanoi, Vietnam