Hanoi - Asia at his best

Hanoi is full (really unbelievable full) of scooters, locals, tourists, restaurants, shops and a great atmosphere. Maybe we liked this city so much because we haven't been in a big busy city for more than 2 months, maybe it was the mix of locals and tourists on the street or the delicious food. And maybe it was a mix of everything.

I love Hanoi! - this was a sentence I repeated about every night when we sat down with out 0.20€ beer which ended in Tom eating donor kebab haha. The feeling to be in the city, just walk around, be able to do everything you want, go shopping, many delicious street food vendors - a total different world compared to the small villages we visited in Laos. 

To learn a little bit more about the history of Vietnam we decided to visit the famous "Hanoi Hilton" (aka Prison). The visit was interesting but it was also totally weird to see how much propaganda was used in the prison. We had the feeling that Vietnam wanted to say "first the French treated us badly here in this prison (and in this country) but we treated the American pilots who were prisoners here so well". It actually showed pictures how the American pilots played basketball and decorated a Christmas tree. Strange. 

Even though Hanoi is huge, the old quarters are pretty small and we kept on meeting other travelers we met before in Laos. Of course that's a reasons to have a beer or two. That's how we spend our night, drinking beer - discussing life's.

It seemed that the locals in hanoi sit down at a street cafe's drinking lemon tea and eat sunflower seeds the whole day. So we joined! Watching the busy city passing by while drinking and chatting. I could have continued to do this for more than 5 days, but our visa time was limited and Vietnam is big - so it was time to leave this beautiful city and move to the coast.