Hanoi Madness

Hanoi madness.

I dropped an unhappy Bob off at the cattery. It breaks my heart leaving him, but he’s safe there.

After finishing the chores around the house, Niel and I cycled off to the airport. He decided not to use a helmet in this trip ( I am), so we had to stick to the cycle ways so that the powers that be, don’t issue him a fine. Everything went to plan except for our gear being overweight. Our on board bags were under weight, so we spent half an hour trying to reduce our weight and juggle things around. Niel tricked the ticket lady by holding some of the weight off the scales so that we got within our 23 kg weight restriction.

$200 NZ = 5000,000 Vitnamese Dong

 

It was hot when we got to Kuala Lumpar, and we spent our time looking around the terminal shops and took the sky train, to and from the terminals 3 times to entertain ourselves.

 

We thought KL was hot Hanoi was stifling. Over 30%C, and humid.  It was fine though and not raining. We took a taxi the 40 kms into Hanoi. It was total madness. 4 million people live in Hanoi, and I think all of them are on scooters. No one gives way to other traffic, people merge and swerve all over the place and constantly toot at each other. It is total chaos and very noisy. It was unbelievable the loads these scooters and bicycles carry – everything from whole families to huge loads of say bricks or even whole carcasses of animals. We saw one scooter with 3 pig carcasses on the seat in front of the rider, it was so overloaded the trotters were almost  dragging on the road.

Scooters galore

 

We tried to get some sleep in the afternoon, but it  was almost impossible with the nonstop noise through the open balcony door. It’s night now, but the noise and traffic hasn’t abated.   To be honest, I’m not looking forward to cycling out of Hanoi tomorrow, but I am looking forward to the country roads.

 



crazy wiring outside our balcony window.

Hotel Reception has warned us about a storm that is coming in a couple of days, they have closed all tours of Halong Bay when we will be there. We will just have to play it by ear, and take it as it comes.