Hanoi’s old quarter

The only way I can describe Hanoi is manic, you are always taking up precious space on the pavement or the road and there is always dozens of mopeds or hawkers that want to use the same piece of tarmac. On our second day in the city that never stops beeping we explored the old quarter even more, Georgie started to feel a bit rough and full of flu so we didn’t go too far, but you don’t need to! In fact its a fucking mission to go anywhere! The old quarter is alot like the Khao San rd in Bangkok only x2… twice the traffic, twice the size, twice the shops, it even feels twice as far from home and there’s generally twice as much going on. We strolled around barely being able to take it all in for several hours, then spotted a lake not too far away so we made a bee line for that hoping for a bit of space for a while.
Its a pretty big lake slapped right in the middle of the city, I forget the name but it apparently has lucky turtles in it or something and if you happen to see one then you get good luck… We saw none. But we did spot loads of interesting shops and even a little mall that we wasted a while wandering around… Of course Georgie bought more clothes, I swear it will be like buckaroo if she keeps cramming stuff in her back pack…
The lake itself was really nice to just walk around, take in the general craziness of Hanoi but from a nice quiet distance. We have time to kill in Hanoi because we ran short on our visas and really didn’t want to leave Vietnam yet so we are getting a month extension which should allow us to see the north but it will take a few days so until then we have nothing but time, there are a few sights around Hanoi we want to see but the primary objective is to sort Georgie out and get her all better first.
After our little stroll around the lake we ducked back into the madness of the old quarter for some lunch at a rooftop cafe that looked out over a roundabout, that was interesting! It was actually hypnotic to watch, you feel almost certain that in the next few seconds you will see an accident and every moped will fall like domino’s.. Luckily it didn’t happen, and we tore ourselves away to get lost in the mess of streets around our old quarter hotel yet again.
We ended up completely lost in some market/alley but it didn’t matter because where ever we were we felt a little lost and that’s half the charm of the place, that it feels like a living thing, everyone and everything is moving and changing and every time you look round its a completely different scene than a few moments ago, mixed with the smells and sounds it really is the deep end. It makes Bangkok look like a sleepy little town!
By yesterday evening Georgie was feeling pretty rough so we went back to our hotel and I found a place that rents out DVD players so she could veg out in front of the box and concentrate on getting better. We headed out for dinner at a wicked awesome vegetarian place which perked her up no end but that’s about it bless her it had been a very long day…