Asia by Hammock

The first thing I'll remeber about Vietnam were the four motorbikes tearing down the freeway each with a whole hog, split and gutted, strapped to the back. Needless to say, we are not in Kansas anymore.
We got in yesterday afternoon after a flight from Chang Mai to Bangkok and Bangkok to Hanoi. While the hogs were memorable (and disgusting), they were not the most impressive part of the trip from the airport in our overloaded minibus. Once we got into the city of Hanoi, the real fun started. Back in Thailand, drivers take lane markers are merely a suggestion; here they might as well have not painted them on. And in some places they haven't. In a cost cutting effort, Hanoi has significantly reduced the number of stop signs and they have only managed to import about four stop lights. The resulting traffic patterns is a dazzling array of swerving, honking, braking, lurching thats exciting, beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.
The sheer number of motobikes is overwhelming. They move around the city like giant swarms threatening to engulph anyone foolish enough to want to cross the street. No one wears helmets (though they do have funny conical hats) and there is no Vietnameese translation for "right of way". Rather than dart across streets, Lonely Planet advises walking slowly and staring at the oncoming traffic so they can steer around you. The most incredible thing is this all works, I have yet to see an accident, incident of road rage or splattered westerner.
We met up with three other English travellers near the lake in the Old Quarter and wandered around a bit finding dinner. The food was good and only around 30,000 Dong (I have 255,000,000 Dong in my bank account) but the wonders of Hanoi are outside the restaurants. On practically every street corner people set up tiny (and I do mean tiny) plastic chairs, plastic glasses and kegs of unkown beer. Known as Bia Hu'i (draught beer), it costs rougly 10 cents (6 pence for those of you from the other side of the pond) for a glass of beer. The mathematics of it is simply astounding. We sat and drank for most of the night and maybe spent three dollars for three of us. We love Hanoi.
After the kegs were kicked we headed next door to a cozy bar. We had just ordered our dollar beers (outrageously expensive if you ask me) when the waitress came over and explained simply that we needed to leave and come back in three minutes. It seems the police were raiding the place, but it would only take a moment. We left, they locked up and by the time we returned the place was in full swing. Absolutely amazing. Finally, thoroughly impressed (and drunk) we hitched a ride home on a motorbike. The same motorbike. And neither of us have gotten any skinnier. It was quite a ride.
Anyways, we are off to watch the Lions match then we have another day in the city and we are heading to Halong Bay. Hope everyone is finding as good of happy hours as we are. Leave us some comments

Steve