What an awesome first few days on my wild adventure!

I arrived in Hanoi on Thursday after a very hectic day sorting out my Vietnamese visa, plane tickets, left over belongings and picking up my girlfriend from the other airport in Bangkok.

We have spent the last couple of days just walking around this buzzing city sampling all of the crazy weird looking food that’s on offer. It’s been a matter of: walk, eat, walk, eat, walk, eat… It’s great as you don’t feel guilty stuffing your face all the time due to all the walking you end up doing.

And then there’s the motorbikes… oh my god! There are so many of them it’s unreal. It’s crazy, but the Vietnamese seem to have a knack of pumping their horns and dodging pedestrians and other motorbikes. It’s hard to put in words how chaotic it is, but watch the video below and you’ll get an idea – although you really need to be in the middle of it all to be scratching your head wondering how this system works.

I’m really liking Hanoi – There’s such a buzz about the place that it seems like I belong here. Maybe it’s the delicious freshly baked bread for sale on most street corners that you can buy smothered with Pate, or maybe it’s because I’m a city guy. A bit of both me thinks.

We were meant to head over to Halong Bay today for Valentines but something come up with work so I’ve been stuck in the hotel room cracking on – I guess this is the downside to working while traveling. Anyway, to make up for the loss of a romantic evening on a boat, we are now getting ready to eat at the Le Beaulieu restaurant in the Sofitel Metropole hotel… I’ll write a review tomorrow as this is meant to be one of the best restaurants in Vietnam!

The streets of Hanoi

Women walk around selling all sorts of fruit and sweets.

Getting some rice noodles with what I thought were pork meatballs but in fact could have been pig brains shaped into a ball!

The brain balls are under the noodles… honest! :)

Watch the video below to see this chaos in action!

Walking back to the hotel after a long day, I got some Pork Satays!