河内一。。。摄景摄人摄色

我觉得我们在吉隆坡五月份逗留的四个星期时间太长了，太久了人就会闷; 好再今天我们就来到河内。 这是我一直都想来经历的地方之一；但因为以前做生意的时候更本没时间，也没机会到来河内。。。所以到今天我们才来到这越南首都学人当游客。 

在河内我们先住 Hanoi Old Quarters 两晚， 因为它靠近还剑湖 Lake Hoan Kiem ("Lake of the Returned Sword" or "Lake of the Restored Sword")。过两晚后我们会搬去 Cathedral Quarters，也是在 还剑湖区。

Mai Hotel 是位埴在河内的旧区, 而旧区共有三十六条老街； 几乎是每拐一个弯就可见到不一样的街景 - 墓碑街、银饰街、祭神用品街、鞋街、画廊街等。在这片区域内的几十条街中，每一条街都是同一商品的专卖街，而且所卖的商品主要是针对越南本地人。当然这里也有很多家庭客栈，是背包族在河内落脚的首选。可以说，这些没有针对外国游客而加以修饰的老街，确实是观察体念当地人生活的好去处。

Check in 之后我们就到处去走走， 这就是自油行的好处， 我们自己 set agenda。也是说， time rich， resource poor！

We arrive Mai Hotel Hanoi bright and early at around 10am. The sky is grey and it is showery. We are lucky we are given our room with two QB's that early in the morning and we promptly settle in and head out of MAI to stretch our legs and to find our bearings. The hotel receptionist recommends us to have our pho (beef or chicken in beef broth and rice noodles) brunch at PHO GIA TRUYEN at 49 Ban Dat St which is just next street from where we are or the Cha Ca (Cha Ca is a famous Hanoi grilled snake head fish in dill, spring onion and other herbs) on Duong Thanh St opposite MAI. Instead we find this little roadside stall selling rice noodle in a kind of tomato broth with fried pork and some kind of snails. We decide to be adventurous and order our rice noodle with the hot broth but minus the snails.

The soup tastes delicious. And we also have our first glasses of iced Vietnamese coffee at the stall.

Feeling nourished we venture out and make our way in an easterly direction towards the Hoan Kiem Lake in a leisurely fashion, taking in the sights and sounds of late morning Hanoi. We hope to find the Water Puppet Show Theater so we can enjoy the puppet show in the afternoon, which every tourist to Hanoi would have seen, it seems. We manage to find the Lake and also the Theater.

I pay for the three tickets - 300,000 dong ($15) + a camera fee of 20k dong ($1) for the 3.30pm show. The fee for being able to take photos inside the Theater is a great way the locals have come up with in order to make an extra buck from tourists who are honest about their intention......

At Hoan Kiem Lake area

Having walked around the Lake area and also paid a brief visit to the Lake we look around for a possible lunch venue. It's not difficult because we can see there are a handful of decent lunch places at the north side of the Lake area. We settle in for The Little Hanoi bar & restaurant @ 21 Hang Gai St. We feel like having baguette and order ours with cheese & ham also cheese & veggie plus La Vie.

The restaurant has a Parisian feel to it (Vietnam was a French colony) and the baguette is fresh.       

The water puppet show was ok and it's a touristy thing to do because we do not know the lyrics nor language. The music they play and the songs they sing are very nice and much more refined than Javanese or Balinese, more akin to Chinese. No doubt due to their common heritage thousands of years ago.

We decide to return to MAI for a rest because the showers persist. Not wanting to be over stretched we have our dinner nearby the hotel at Gecko @ 86 Hang Quat St and call it the night.

First impression of Hanoi - very busy, noisy, lots of interesting small traders, there are some nice restaurants, everybody looking out to make a buck from tourists. AND, we need to learn how to cross the streets of Old Quarters!

经验告诉我们，有些人想敲诈我们这些游客。很多时候，我们需要支付更高的价格来得到商品和服务。