Hanoi I love you

(even if I would have prefered to leave you this morning)

This morning weather was supposed to be good so that I could go to Halong bay, but then at the last minute the motorbike taxi came, and said they closed it. So I went back to my room and caught some more sleep! Thus today I'm resting, reading, learning a little bit more of vietnamese (hopefully) and watching the vietnamese TV.

Yesterday: visiting Hanoi
In the morning I walked down in the old quarter. The streets are just unbeleivable. The sidewalks are 100% occupied by whatever people selling/working or parked motorbikes, there are millions of them here. I had to learn how to cross the street: if you wait for the traffic to stop, you won't cross ever. So the best is to take a quick look to see if there are cars (cars thinks they have the priority), and if not then stop thinking and just cross the street. If you don't wanna get hit, there is only one rule: keep your pace. Like this motorbikes just avoid you and everyone's happy!
The old quarter is really charming. There are specialized streets, one with shops only selling shoes, one for glasses, one for chikens, one for tin boxes, one for furnitures etc etc.. The markets are really colorfull, and vietnamese people are very authentics. I think it's the place where I've flet the furthest from Europe. Viet people are not as nice as thai though, they actually often fake to be nice.

However I got really lucky yesterday again. After my walking tour in the old quarter, I went to the history museum to learn a bit more, cause I felt a bit ignorant about vietnam history, and a viet guy came to see me with his bike. I thought it was a mototaxi as usual so I kept on saying no, but then he was insisting, saying he didn't wanna make buisness and just talk with me. I was a bit afraid of a rip off, but we talked first on the street and he said he was studying international relations in Hanoi, he was in hollidays so he could show me the city! So that's what we did, he guided me to the museum first, so we talked about french colonisation, american war etc.. I think vietnam has been attacked by every country that could: China, Japan, Mongolia, Burma, France, US, Thailande... but they got so tough all the time that they kicked everyone out. We talked about the feelings vietnamese people have towards the different western countries, then I carried on to the communist party and he checked arround if there was anybody in the room, lowered his voice and said "this we can talk about later". Pretty surprising isn't it?
He took me to a very nice place for lunch, next to a lake, where we talked about Jean Sarkosy, Carla Bruni, the communist party in Vietnam, but also about him and his sexual obsession (that I won't detail here, but I can tell you, it's quite juicy). I had to pay the quite expensive meal, 10 times more expensive than what I usually pay, but I guess it was the deal, and it was pretty good: you had to make your own spring roll with fresh fish and other stuff.
Then he took me arround the city with his bike and back home. He tryed to get some money out of me in the end, but after some discussion, he harldy agreed that we were frends, so I only paid the gazoline. (Am I wrong?)

The quality of the food here is generally lower than in Thailand, but there are many more different things and tastes. I have to admit I really appreciate the bred, which is like back in France, and that used to be my basic food there. They also have croissant and stuff like this.. colonisation... colonisation..

My hostel is great, althought a bit expensive. I hope I can go to Halong bay tomorrow. Today is rainy but still hot.