At 1am local time, hotel reservations for the Origins Game Fair opened. I set an alarm, but I think I messed it up by trying to set one that was just the vibrate function on my phone with no noise, because I slept right through it. Fortunately I woke up about 20 minutes later anyway, so not such a big deal.
I’d assumed that I’d have to go down to the common area to do the hotel thing, but it turns out that the hatch for the bunk locker works as a pretty good desk, and the bunk was easily tall enough to sit up in. Got the hotel I wanted without (m)any issues; ‘Amusingly’, the hotel booking itself went fine, but the hotel system one-time-code took so long to arrive that I used a password instead. In the end, the email with the code arrived a few minutes after my booking confirmation.
Then it was back to sleep for a while.
The hostel does a free walking tour of the Old Quarter, so I used it as my “Do A Thing” for the day, and it was a good choice.
I’d say that the single biggest reason I’m glad to have done that tour is the crash course in not getting run over on the absolutely insane roads, the biggest bit being “Walk at a steady pace & they’ll go around you”, with a side order of “Rapid beeping means they probably won’t stop”.
In all seriousness, it was terrifying to see at first, but after a while you can kind of see the patterns of people solving their own local traffic interactions & making their way through the intersections or down the streets.
Billy the Tour Guide couldn’t always be heard over the deafening roar of traffic & horns.
Hanoi gears up for Christmas, having just finished gearing up for Halloween.
Phung Hung Mural Street
I knew about the Train Street, but somehow forgot or never knew that it was in Hanoi, so the last stop of the tour was particularly fun.
We got there maybe 20 minutes before the train, and it slowly filled up with more & more people as the approximately scheduled time got closer.
Almost everything on that section of the street is a cafe or bar or restaurant, and they were all set up with tables facing the tracks, so we were sat looking straight across at the patrons opposite; I think they were in the same café, but I’m not certain.
It didn’t feel unsafe; They’ve clearly done this thousands of times before, and know just how far back everything needs to be. That said, the train is huge when you’re up that close to it. It’s like a string of small buildings rumbling by.
A fantastic experience.
Also, I discovered that coconut iced coffee exists & is delicious, because it seemed rude, and probably against the assumed rules, to not buy something from the cafe we’d essentially invaded under instruction from the tour guide.
I had a fairly relaxed afternoon & evening.
Having survived the guided walk, I went out on my own, with the plan of walking around the block; When you have no idea where you’re going, it doesn’t really matter where you go, so turning left all the time at least means that you’ll get back to your starting point.
Spotted a few food places along the way, but stopped at one doing Banh Mi, mostly because a queue out the door is a good sign, but also because I’ve never tried Banh Mi. I get the hype now, and I feel that it’s justified, because that was delicious. And I had another coconut coffee, because I liked the first one.
I’d planned to take it back to the hostel, but I hadn’t asked for takeaway, so they brought it to me was I sat in a little chair on the street corner, watching the traffic happening. It was a good moment.
Back at the hostel, where they have a free beer happy half-hour, I have my beer, but didn’t chose a very social table. So be it. I’m limiting myself to one, because any more seems to leave me fuzzy-headed.
Also it’s really loud, because they’ve pumped up the club music.
A good first ‘proper’ day in Vietnam, I think.
…
I’m limiting myself to one
So I got chatting to an American named Ian, and my one beer turned into two and a bit. They’re working from pitchers, so when the happy half hour finished there was still some left, so they went around looking for glasses to top up. It would have been rude to decline.