Despite being awake since 4am, a long leisurely breakfast and some serious Candy Crushing, and David announcing he has "three nuts" - serious Candy Crushers will understand that, others, I'm not so sure, resulted in us not leaving the hotel till gone 10am. No worries though, as by now Hanoi was familiar territory and we had no exacting plans for the day. The morning was taken up with coffee stops, running errands and collecting some specially commissioned cufflinks for Ant and David and some dresses that had been altered for Gill. (Gill insists it was to make them smaller!) Our wending brought us to the exclusive few streets around the Sofitel Metropole Hotel, any idea of a designer bargain was quickly crushed by the exorbitant prices at Hermes, LV and the like, the pound is in a bit of a state, even compared to the Vietnamese Dong... We nearly made a significant dong error, by incorrectly reading the prices on LV sunglasses. We failed to see the "1" in front of the 5,600,000 dong on the label, just a small miscalculation of over £300. Luckily we spotted it before the credit cards were out of the wallets! The Metropole Hotel is an "grande dame" hotel with interesting history but overly stuffy and the only place in Hanoi not to offer free Wifi. We lingered only for a quick and exorbitantly priced drink at the roadside terrace cafe. On past the Hanoi Opera House and off to the Vietnamese museum of women. Not an obvious choice, but it has good reviews and we spent an entertaining hour, bitching about random traditions and clothing styles.
Of course our day had to be punctuated with lunch, and we jumped in a cab, not an extravagance here, most places cost about only a pound or two on the meter, to La Badiane, an old French villa serving a bargain three course set lunch, and the obligatory lunch time bottle of white. A very pleasant lunching spot indeed. Lunch was walked off as we headed back to the hotel, down the now very familiar streets of the Old Quarter to catch a mid afternoon nod. We are getting much better at crossing the roads, we just step purposefully into the stream of cars, taxi's and motorbikes, and hope that the traffic parts around you. We think we are getting quite professional at it. This was indeed a lazy chilled out day.
A cheeky bia hoi to kick off the evening at bia hoi corner. This pic shows 45 pence worth of beer, and yes that's for all of it not just one, a real bargain.
A lot less pestering now, we have clearly made it to the old hand category, and we were left alone to enjoy our cheap beers, sitting on tiny plastic stools in the gutter.
David, who always thinks the best restaurant is just around the corner had read about an expat and up and coming area called Tay Ho, about 6 km north of the city, around the large West Lake. Without any specific restaurant in mind, we ended up touring around in a cab, past large hotels and expat flats. We ended up at Bobby Chinn's, a draped, mirrored, North African themed Vietnamese restaurant, quite a combination! We felt that we deserved a few cocktails, so we invited Mr Negroni, Mr Pineapple Margarita and Ms G & T to join us! A fun evening to round off a thoroughly unplanned and delightful day. Then time for bed in readiness for an early start for Halong Bay tomorrow.
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