We arrived at our hotel in Hanoi around 8:15 PM last night after a flight from Dalat and an hour drive to the Metropole. A nice thing about traveling with B&R is that you don't have to deal with any luggage, queue up for your boarding pass or worry about any airport logistics. After checking in on the Club floor of the Opera Wing and taking a quick shower we enjoyed a light dinner in Le Club.
The next morning we were off fairly early for a tour around Hanoi. Our guides hired a fleet of cyclo drivers to take us from point to point during the morning. After we toured different sites they would be waiting for us no matter where we exited. Each driver remembered their respective passenger and waived us over to be sure we got into their designated cyclo. Our guides warned us that they would periodically poke us to try to extract a tip but advised us that they had already been tipped quite well. Towards the end of our morning my guide peeled off from the group down a street in the old quarter and for awhile I worried that I was being shanghaied to a back alley in order to make sure that I paid up, but fortunately he dropped me at the meeting point.
The Old quarter is made of 36 streets and numerous alleys. These streets, which represented the 36 guilds, made up the entire city at the beginning of the 20th century. They take their names from the particular trades practiced on each street. Some translations include Silversmith Street, Incense Street, Salted Fish Street, Red-Dyed Fabric Street, Noodle Street, Buddhist Altars and Statues Street, Coffin Street and Bowl Street. Traffic is crazy with motorbikes, cars, bicycles, pedestrians and vendors balancing their goods on their shoulders all jockeying for position. Crossing the street on foot poses a challenge but traffic seems to weave around you so you eventually just plunge in.
Source: expect-to-fly.blogspot.com
