The Honeymoon's Over...

With a thousand potential titles in the running for this blog post, we ended up with the above. Strictly speaking, this is not the title because Jake and I actually feel the honeymoon is over. Rather, the "easy" piece of this travel adventure has officially ended. We no longer have the comfort of our cousin in Manila and his family, their unwavering "scholarship" evenings, their washer/dryer, their driver, etc. We're officially on our own until we are again in the safe haven of our friends in Doha, Qatar.

That said, we've landed in Hanoi, Vietnam. With this in mind, we could have easily called this blog "Pho Heaven." We decided against that though since this would officially be our third of three posts that all contain the word "heaven." But so it goes...

Hanoi is a feast for the senses. It's literally not possible to walk on the streets. It's much better and more safe to be in vehicular motion, particularly on a moped. Moped drivers are everywhere and they tend to have the right-of-way whether on the street or the sidewalk. Walking on the sidewalks is also not an option as everything else is actually done on the sidewalk. You can eat on the sidewalk, sodder on the sidewalk, get a haircut on the sidewalk, sell wares on the sidewalk, park on the sidewalk...you get the point.

After landing in Hanoi, we checked into our two-star hotel in the Old Quarter and went out in search of pho. Unfortunately for us, Jake and I were armed only with our mututally inadequate senses of direction and a map that, as it turns out, we were reading upside down. The positive for us was that we had done our reasearch for this leg of the journey thanks to Lonely Planet and a recent all-about-Vietnamese-food article (http://www.travelandleisure.com/trips/food-lovers-vietnam-getaway) we read by Peter Jon Lindberg in Travel + Leisure. If anyone would know about the topic, he certainly would!

By the time we landed upon Lindberg's recommendation #1, a restaurant called Pho Gia Truyen, it was already closed. So instead, we opted for an even more local option - authentic street food pho. We sat in the world's tiniest plastic chairs (on the sidewalk) and asked for whatever was being cooked (on the sidewalk). No other conversation took place except our request for "two" of whatever was being served from a boiling stock pot (on the sidewalk). Thankfully, we were served two heaping bowls of steaming pho ga (chicken noodle soup, on the sidewalk). The meal gave one of our favorite restaurants in NYC, Pho Viet Huong, some bona fide competition. The price was even better - about $3.00 for two giant bowls. (Yes, Rich, they did give us the good soup spoons too.)

After a decent night's sleep to the soft sounds of Cape Fear in the background with Vietnamese subtitles, we were off on our first official day in Hanoi...much better by daylight while reading the map correctly. We continued to sip and eat our way through the city on Peter Jon Lindberg's recommendations - coffee at Cafe Nang (so tasty with condensed milk) and lunch at Quan An Ngon. Apparently known to locals simply as Ngon (delicious), this restaurant truly lived up to its reputation. Not only was it touted by T+L, but Lonely Planet also gives it props. A bit western in that it has normal sized chairs and a mix of patronage, it is also the largest establishment we've seen here. Our double soup order of Pho Bo (beef soup) and Fish Cake Noodle soup, along with rice vermicelli stirfry with pork and shrimp, was spot on. We finished up with sticky sweet corn soup and more Vietnamese coffee. Ngon!

Dinner tonight was another T+L-recommended restaurant, Cha Ca Thanh Long. They serve one thing - Cha Ca, which is a DIY fish dish with stir-fried spring onion and fresh dill garnished with cilantro, hot peppers (if you wish) and soy-like sauce over the ubiquitous rice vermicelli noodles. In a word - scrumptious - and a Jake favorite.

We peppered today with shopping (beautiful silks, art, metal works and other crafts), and a two-hour guided bike ride to see as much as we could on our only full day here. Tomorrow, we head to Halong Bay for an overnight trip and then southward to Hoi An and some of the beach towns before finishing up our Vietnam stay in Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon).

Lasting impressions for today? We imagine it to be difficult for our taller friends and family members to navigate Hanoi - everything is super-sized in the opposite direction...much more mini-me than McDonald's. Also, PR apparently works! Thank goodness for "objective" editorials (a la T+L) otherwise we may not have found the culinary gems that we did in Hanoi, and no doubt the ones we will continue to discover in Vietnam. Kudos for my profession. :) And, for any PR agency personnel whose hotels, restaurants, etc. are mentioned in these blog posts, I'll have you know the UMV for "Fear of Flying" is up there - all of 7 people. Put that in your report and smoke it...!