Hanoi, Vietnam, Asia

Today did not start out well. I got up at 6:15am after getting about three hours sleep to watch the last Red Sox game of the season. We had to win to have a shot in the playoffs and it was looking good for a while. We were winning 3-2 and the Rays were losing 7-0, but it didn’t stay that way. The Sox gave up their lead in the 9th to lose 4-3 and the Rays came back to win in the 14th inning. That’s our season finished. It is unbelievably depressing to think that it’s over. I sulked for the rest of the morning, until my new friend Melissa invited me out for lunch.

I met Melissa at her hostel at 1pm and we went out for a traditional Vietnamese meal called Bun Cha. It was awesome! Rice noodles, minced pork, coriander and a sweet sauce. I’ll definitely be having that again before I leave! We went for a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake and found a really nice ice cream parlor. It had a ridiculous name (Fanny Ice Cream), but I haven’t tasted better ice cream before. I had a bowl called Bruxelles which had chocolate, mocha and macadamia ice cream, with a shot of Kahlua and Bailey’s in it. Amazing! Melissa had some chocolate chili ice cream, which was really strange, but good too.

I came back to the hotel to chill for the afternoon before going out tonight. I got an email from Jade, who I met the other night and was supposed to be going to Sa Pa tomorrow night as well. She told me that her and her mom cancelled their trip to Sa Pa because it was going to be raining heavily for the next four days. I had a look at the weather forecast and it looked horrible. I went downstairs and found out that I would only be charged $15 (of the $125 full trip cost) to cancel it. I figured it was the best idea considering trekking in the mountains in the rain for two days would be miserable. I was also already a little bit nervous that if my train was a few hours late I might miss my flight to Hong Kong, so this would put my mind at ease a bit more.

I met Melissa and some of her other friends at Beer Corner for some really cheap beers. It was a cool place to sit on a street corner with quite a few locals and had beers for $0.25 each. We were all a bit hungry, so we went to another Gecko restaurant and shared a couple of pizzas. It was not the best pizza I’ve had, but it was a nice change from rice and noodles. We didn’t stay out late after that and I came back to the hotel before midnight. It doesn’t look like the wildest city anyway, but maybe I’ll get a chance to see more of that before I go.