Hanoi Phoenix Hotel

Here we are on the other side of the globe, in the bustling city of Hanoi, after more than 20 hours of flight and over 14,200 kms from home. We left Montreal at 6am on Sunday morning and arrived in Hanoi at 10 pm local time on Monday, through two connections in New York and Seoul. Just to make things a little more interesting, we had an additional 45-minute cab ride to get to the Phoenix hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi... needless to say... we were happy to finally get to a room.

Tod...

Third night in a row that i can't sleep while Pierre is snoozing away happily. It's either the jet lag or the extra super firm mattress that feels like a king-sized piece of plywood. And people thought Ikea mattresses were hard... pfffft! you ain't seen nothing yet!

Yesterday, we booked all our tours through the hotel's travel agent out of sheer laziness. For less than $500 US, we're going to the Perfume Pagoda, which we did today, Tam Coc and Hoa Luu tomorrow, then off to Halong Bay ...

Back in Hanoi for a couple of days of downtime as we've been overdoing the visiting a bit. Pierre has caught a cold from some tourists and the poor man has been trying not to cough or to blow his nose while we were in the train, in case some commie reports him as having the swine flu whereby he may get thrown into the Hanoi Hilton for bringing the plague to the Socialist Republic of VN. This is a regular occurrence on all our trips, he gets a cold and is down for a couple of days. It's like t...

Friday morning, we got on a small bus and got to Hoa Lu and visited the fist capital of Vietnam. 1000 years ago, the king had set the heart of the coutry in this location because it was a militarily strategic position in a safe environment as it was surrounded by mountains. Eventually, the bosses of the country figured out that being positionned for commerce was a better thing, so it was moved to Hanoi. During our tour, we visited temples where VNese come to pay respect to their ancestor king...

Another new currency, another new language, another set of gastronomical mysteries to discern. I arrived in Hanoi on Sunday on a flight from Vientiane, Laos. Arranging the flight was quite an interesting process, and by interesting I mean the most stressful experience of my trip thus far. Due to a ripple effect from the Bangkok unpleasantness it was nearly impossible to book a last minute flight to anywhere within SE Asia. I was lucky to find a Lao Airlines flight to Hanoi within 2 days of my...

Woke up this morning to the sound of a loudspeaker. For about fifteen minutes a
male Vietnamese voice was saying something – either that “Communism
is good” – or some daily affirmations – the country's
constitution perhaps? We asked the hotel staff and they said it was
the government announcing the news and explaining what new and
wonderful things the government was doing for the people of Vietnam.
Awesome – it did remind us of our da...

Well, the sights, sounds and smells of Hanoi have well and truly hit us in the face! We are staying in the Old Quarter and spent our first day wandering around and taking it all in. The first thing you notice in Hanoi is probably the smog. The city is engulfed in a smog, you can feel it in your eyes and I think it caused yesterdays thumping headache. The place is humming with traffic, particularly motorbikes and scooters which don't help. Its a crazy dash trying to cross the road. We had been...

Chuc Mung Nam Moi! Happy New Year! Our second day in Hanoi was a little less chaotic. I got my luggage the night I sent out the first blog...so perhaps your prayers worked. Thank you! The streets were a little less crowded the second day. Saturday is market day so we think that is why it was soooooo crazy around town the day before. We have read that before the New Year everyone is out shopping for clothes, food, and offerings. During the day we walked around some more, taking in all the sigh...