We had a nice little breakfast at our hotel this morning (though the kids realized too late that they could also order crepes and pancakes - it was a topic of frequent discussion today!). The plan was to exchange some money then walk the streets in the morning.
Exchanging money was interesting - the hotel recommended we do it at a jewellery store (any one would do) on a nearby street for the best rate. They were right - we exchanged a bunch of US dollars for a fistful of Dong (insert laughter here) at a rate greater than the current international exchange rate. That demand must be either speculative or show that dollars can do more than local currency for jewelry shops...
The French quarter is pretty cool (though extremely hot and humid!) - streets and streets of small shops offering everything you could think of. I love how specialized the shops are: styrofoam shops, wallpaper shops, metal cage shops, spice shops, prayer flag shops, fruit shops - and on and on. We are getting stares, but from mostly friendly faces. I think it's a combination of the girls (you don't see too many western kids here) and the Gaijinzilla (a term Steve and Kristing coined in Japan combining the word for foreigner and Godzilla!), though it could just be Beth (they don't often see such attractive, totally not sweaty backpacking Deloitte executives here.... :-)).
We made our way to 2 markets today. The first was a local market that had mostly used clothes - it wa da bit bizarre. The next was the popular "Dong Xuan" market near the top of the night market street. Don Xuan was pretty cool, though very hot and if you went around the outside of the interior market, it was pretty tight quarters. This market pretty much had every clothing item and type of fabric you could possibly buy, as well as the usual tourist trinkets.
What fascinated me was the outside alleyways surrounding the markets - everywhere you'd look there were little "restaurants" set up - that is, 8 little chairs about 30cm tall, a low table with a bunch of plates of food and toppings, a single person behind the table doing prep/serving/cooking and maybe a sign and tarp above. On one hand you would be thinking "I'd never eat at that place!" but on the other it would be drawing you in... At least I felt that way!
We eventually made it to a small local restaurant near our hotel for lunch - it was yummy. Based on the meals so far, we are quickly remembering that eating local is the way to go.
The kids and Beth are becoming expert road crossers. You basically just project confidence, step into traffic and move smoothly across. When you're in the middle of the road, you feel a bit like Noah parting the scooter sea - it's quite magical... Lol. I took a short video that doesn't really give you the full feel of the roads but it's a start:
The afternoon mission was to cool down, so we took an expensive cab (55,000 DONG!... Oh wait, that's $3....) down to a little more modern area and we took in Tomorrowland (pretty good!). Beth played the role of our friend Probir during the movie by catching a few zees....
Unfortunately there was a Starbucks outside the movie theater.... But it was across a huge, busy road. Would we brave the crossing, or tuck tails and cab it home??? We dug into our lifetime of experiences playing Crossy Road (kids) and Frogger (parents) and made a beeline for Starbucks.... Hmmm good.
A short walk later, we stumbled across a huge park that bordered a pretty large lake with 2 islands. Interestingly we had to pay to get in...25 cents each - weird. It seemed like a very locally focused park. There were people doing exercises, boys playing hackey sack with a soccer ball, roller skaters and the ever present market set up. The oddest thing was that throughout the park were derelict, tiny rides - it was almost like Center island in Toronto had moved here, the closed up 25 years ago. We felt a combination of amusement and creepiness. It almost felt like reflection of where communism got Russia...
We have an adventure planned tomorrow, and we are looking forward to getting near the water the day after. I'm loving the service and attitude of the staff at our hotel and most other places of business and I'm liking Hanoi so far.
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