Hanoi 2016 (Day 1)

It'd been sometimes since I'd traveled to a new country. I mean I'd been to Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia a couple of times in the past few years so going to Vietnam would be something new.

Don't know why I'm writing this post now. Maybe I just want to relive those beautiful moments. Isn't it strange that how we can be so happy together and all of sudden it's just bittersweet memories? This was just 3 weeks ago.

So we traveled to Hanoi for 5 days and it costed us approximately S$750 each (everything included). Air tickets was about S$320 (2 ways) and we signed up for a hotel plus tour package with B & B Hanoi Hotel for USD$199 (about S$270). You can check the deals out here. Pretty decent hotel with friendly staffs. It's located in Old Quarter and has plenty of nice cafes and restaurants in its vicinity.

Day 1

Ready to depart!

A random photo while on our way to the hotel.

Hanoi is 1 hour behind Singapore time and it took about 4 hours to get there? Can't remember, probably knocked out during the flight, haha.

The view from outside our room.

Went food hunting after we checked into our hotel and the first Vietnam delicacy we had was Bun Cha. You should have heard about it from social medias when Obama ate it when he dropped by Hanoi recently. We did not go to the same restaurant though.

It consists of some vegetables, rice noodle
and grilled pork in soup.

Dig in! Yummy!

The place was empty so we kind of  had the entire area to ourselves.

We didn't have any tours on the first day so we simply explored the Old Quarter. Did I mention that the temperature was intense at 37 degrees?! It was so warm that it felt like we were on one of our hikes! Hahaha!

Interesting name of a cafe near our hotel

Sword Lake. Just 8 minutes walk from our hotel.

I guess you can call this the central area of
Old Quarter.

Grabbed our SIM cards, chilled at some cafe and headed back to hotel in the evening. We were both drained from the early flight and the immense heat. Besides, we had to wake up early for our Halong Bay Tour the next day! I will write about it another time, not feeling so well now...