Logistics and Karaoke

Yesterday was a brilliant but utterly unexpected day. OK so I knew I was doing tour with Hanoi Kids having found details of them on Travelfish and read the great reviews on Tripadvisor I'd signed up for a tour on my first full day in Hanoi. What happened in the course of that tour however was not what I thought might have been on the itinerary for the day. 

So a very lovely and smiley student called Trang turned up at the agreed time of 10.30 to meet me for the tour. We sat in my hotel and discussed what I wanted to do. 1) Walk around the Old Quarter 2) Buy me a scarf and if possible a jacket as it was bloody freezing in Hanoi something I hadn't expected. No problem and off we went. 2 minutes in scarf purchased, result. Trang knows a shop where we can buy North Face jackets very cheap (they make them in Vietnam) we can walk there and see things on the way. Excellent. 30 minutes later jacket purchased. Now we're off to the Hanoi Hilton, what's left of the prison where the French kept political prisoners and later on the Vietnamese kept US pilots including John McCain. All a bit grim. Then we had an amazing lunch at Quan An Ngon, clearly a very popular restaurant with the locals it was packed. The food was amazing and it was brilliant to have a local recommend dishes to try. We had Vietnamese Pancakes, Broken sticky rice with pork and beef in the southern style with noodles. Yum. It looked like it might be a bit more expensive than some places but at about five quid for two of us and drinks I was more than happy.

Now it was after lunch where I was expecting the tour to come to an end as Trang had a class to go at her University. However after a walk back to her motorcycle I found myself on the back of it on the way to her Logistics lecture at the University of Foreign Trade in Hanoi. First time for everything and all that. As I sat down in her lecture creating quite a stir amongst the other students I couldn't help but laugh at the situation. Here I was going 'back to school' on my travels. 2 hours later (I didn't learn much, something about Hamburg rules and shipping containers sinking) we left and went to a pagoda near by which was filled with students playing various sports like badminton and I met some more of her friends. They were very inquisitive about me and where I come from and I found them all to be very friendly. Apart from the old lady who appeared out of the shadows and started hissing at us. Alarming.

After the pagoda we walked to a cafe that was bloomin miles away as Trang had invited me to join her and some friends for a karaoke party. It turned out to be a Hanoi Kids social in a private room on the top floor of a shiny cafe (somewhere, god knows where in Hanoi) with 40+ of the guides. It was amazing, they sang a mixture of western and Vietnamese songs and some played guitar. Trang had repeatedly asked me through the day what song I would be singing and I had either avoided the question or just point blank refused owing to my rubbish voice. I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad I never agreed to it owing to the fact they were all rather talented! 

So my 'morning' tour saw me return to the hotel nearly 12 hours later, after some sight seeing, shopping, a motorbike ride, university lecture and karaoke party. Totally unexpected but utterly brilliant. I can't guarantee the same kind of experience but if any of you ever come to Hanoi you have to do a Hanoi Kids tour it's the best way to see Hanoi and get a proper local experience. 

Photos to follow when I can upload them.