Putting my tour guide skills to use

A very dear friend of mine from Summit arrived in Hanoi a few days ago. Scott, currently studying architecture at a school in Beijing, got some time off to come over to Vietnam for a visit. He convinced 4 other students to join him, so I've spent the past few days taking them around the city, and, obviously, out to sample the best street food Hanoi has to offer. Today, we all went to a famous bun cha place, then formed a motorbike gang and drove around West Lake to take in the sights and view the impressive architecture (West Lake is the most affluent neighborhood in town...). After the motorbike tour, we all walked from my house to get some hot oil grill dinner. Since it was Sunday, we strolled through the night market (only set up on weekends), admiring the array of sandals, stickers, keychains, jewelry, cell phone accessories, and all other sorts of random goods. Us girls all got held up at the sandal stand, where those with small enough feet were able to get some lovely sandals for 2 dollars a pair. The boys had disappeared by this point, but we found them further down chugging glass bottles of Coca-cola. There was some sort of strange promotion that featured Vietnamese girls in red, "Coke outfits" who were giving out free bottles to all passerby. This resulted in a giant mob around the ice-cooler, since things are rarely free in this country. In keeping with this trend, there were "perimeter men" who stationed themselves around the area to make sure no one tried to walk off with a glass bottle (we tried and failed...). So we basically had to drink these bottles as fast as possible in order to get away from the crowd. The night market conveniently comes to an end at our dinner spot, so laden with bags of sandals, we sat down to a table of beef and eggplant "grilled" in oil. Since it is currently a holiday, many of the locals have taken the opportunity to get out of Hanoi, leaving the city enjoyably low-key; there is no traffic, no crowds, and a lot less stress. So far we already have our visitors convinced that Hanoi is better than Beijing, but we will see if this opinion persists once the daily hustle starts up again on Tuesday.

Tomorrow, 18 of us are going to spend the night on a boat cruising around Ha Long Bay. I took the liberty of arranging the trip myself, and made sure to spend the extra 10 dollars per person for a "luxury liner". This basically means that they serve better food, have nicer bathrooms, and more chairs on the deck. The last cruise we went on (back when my brother Luke was visiting) was more of a "bottom-rung" type boat, and the quality and quantity of the food was the biggest issue for complaint. Not wanting to deal with hungry people, I figured springing a few extra dollars would be a good idea. So now I am going to pack my bathing and sunglasses, cross my fingers that the rain will hold out, and get ready for my 3 hour bus ride tomorrow morning!