Hanoi

Our first stop in Vietnam was the capital, Hanoi.  Up in the north of Vietnam it's a bit colder than where we've been recently but still in the 60's.  We hope all you guys back home are faring OK under the three feet of snow.  Hanoi was a fun place with a bit of a different feel than All the places we've been in Southeast Asia so far.  There are motorbikes everywhere.  I mean everywhere. There are so many it's insane.  We thought there were a lot bicycles in Amsterdam, but multiply that by 5, put them in the middle of the road and then have them follow none of the traffic laws and you get close.  We've actually heard they are even worse in Ho Chi Minh City so that will be fun.  To cross the street, you basically just look both ways and start walking.  The motorbikes will generally slow down a bit and weave around you.  It's kind of a leap of faith.  We actually don't have a good picture of all of them because we were probably busy trying not to get hit.  Also, lots of them have somehow managed to strap a ridiculous amount of stuff to the back of their bike.  Our favorite has been the people that are riding around with five foot trees in pots strapped on.

As a sidenote, you may have noticed that Christiana finally pulled ahead of me in the cribbage standings.  She has been on a roll in Southeast Asia and we've had some really close games recently where I was trying to hold her off, but alas, I'm now behind.

Farmers in rice paddies way back when (several hundred years ago) used to entertain each other with puppets in the water.  Nowadays, however, the water puppet theaters are purely a tourist activity.  It's pretty strange to see marionettes of people and dragons and turtles among other things dancing and running around on a stage of water (with some Vietnamese that you don't understand thrown in), but I really enjoyed it.  At one point a farmer killed a tiger for eating a chicken.  It was weird enough to be fun, and only an hour long so it didn't wear out its welcome.  I don't think Chrissy was quite as entertained.

Bun Cha is a delicious local dish of grilled pork in a broth with rice noodles and herbs.  There are two restaurants that serve this exact same dish right next to each other.  As you can see one doesn'the take too kindly to the other.  This sign is hanging very prominently in the apparent "real" bun cha restaurant.  We only went to this one so I don't have a comparison.

There is a really nice lake in the center of Hanoi and we were staying right by it.  It's called Hoan Kiem Lake which means "Lake of the Returned Sword."  Acording to legend, the emperor was boating in the lake and a turtle god asked for his sword (that was apparently given to him by a different god) back.  The emperor obliged and changed the name of the lake.  In the water puppet show there is a recreation of this legend.

Hanoi has a fascinating women's museum that has exhibits on different women and life as a woman in Vietnam.  The section with all the marriage customs of the different tribes was cool.  One of them had a second ceremony eight or nine years after the first one after they sacrificed a buffalo.  Here is Chrissy ready to carry something and go selling on the streets.  We saw women with these all the time.  She is just missing the conical hat.

There is a Confucian temple in Hanoi that is pretty neat.  It used to be the first university in Vietnam.  Above are some of the 82 stone stelae that commemorate the scholars who passed the Royal exam.

Here I am at the gate of great synthesis which is a good name for a gate.

This is a pretty great statue.  In Vietnam, we're pretty sure this is called a unicorn.  It doesn't really look anything like a unicorn but that's what one of our guides called it.  There are four sacred animals: the tortoise, the phoenix, the dragon, and the unicorn.  You'll notice only one of those is actually real.

Here is Confucius at the end of the temple.

As everyone is well aware, there was a game on Sunday.  For us, it was Monday morning, but I did find a restaurant that was showing the Super Bowl live on Truevisions Sports which is a Thai channel.  They even had a very large breakfast buffet and an open bar because who doesn't need a beer when the Super Bowl starts at 6:30 AM.  There was a decent crowd that seemed split between the two teams.  A few locals who came in for breakfast around 8:00 were very confused by the crowd I think.  It was awesome to be able to watch it live, but we did miss out on commercials shown (except for a few Thai ones at halftime).  When there were commercials back home they just showed an overhead shot of the field.  We did get to watch the halftime show which was entertaining.  

Then again who needs commercials when the game was that crazy.  My heart was pumping really hard the whole second half and I jumped out of my chair in the middle of the restaurant at the interception.  I could go on and on about it.  Brady was playing out of his mind on the last scoring drives.  Edelman was awesome.  The defense repeatedly came up huge, and if even if throwing the ball was a weird call, Butler made a ridiculous break to get to that ball.  All in all, I very much enjoyed my Super Bowl in Vietnam experience.

The Thai announcers were very excited, too.