Food at a Market and Transportation

By far the most popular form of transportation in and around Hanoi. Not sure about other parts of the country yet because we have not gone anywhere far yet.

Although I don't have a picture of it, I have seen 5 people on one of these motorbikes.

Letting you know who is in charge.

Toads for sale for eating.

Eels

The inside of some fish.

Crabs wrapped up so they can't pinch.

All kinds of dried fish.

Oranges on a motorbike.

Love this.

Outside a school.

One of the few intersections with a stoplight.

We love riding the bus, it only costs 15 cents and it is air conditioned although usually crowded!

Food

Yes, we ate crickets on our second night here, and our friends ate bamboo grubs last night, but the following is pretty much what we eat day to day:

Pho ga - chicken soup with rice noodles and herbs. We have this often for breakfast at a place down the street. They have little plastic tables on the sidewalk with little stools that we can barely fit on, and they are getting to know us. We have 2 bowls of Pho, 2 glasses of ice tea, and a basket of fried bread-like things. We sometimes go there for dinner too, like tonight.
Lunch - not sure what this dish would be called here. There is a little cafe at school that serves lunch. The lady is nice and remembers the SYA students from last year. She lets you pick whatever you want with your rice, which is great. This is a picture of Ted's plate. He gets the pieces of meat. I get the greens and usually a scrambled egg and salty peanuts. The little shrimp are too cute!

Sometimes we have a little trouble with dinner...here we are trying a new (for us) place by Amy's apartment. It is a typical street setup with outdoor cooking, little tables, smoke from the grill in the air...

But on the grill, it looks suspiciously like duck heads...

And we only managed to order some grilled duck parts, including the head of course, and some herbs and beer. A lady walked by selling flat crispy bread things, so I got one.

We have discovered a new diet plan, called the language diet. If you can't speak the language, you can't order enough food, or you order random things, so you are therefore forced into dieting! The above picture was what we managed to order for 4 big people. The night before we ended up with chicken parts including the head! So tonight we opted for the safety of our Pho place. Now I think I'll have some cookies from FiviMart.

Recent Shopping!

The Crumpler!!! My new bag, with a great name - I had to get it!

Then we thought we'd "go native!"

Ted test driving...

Off we go!

Because we were not on a bus or in a taxi, we finally got to stop at the pretty flower vendors on our way home!

Temple of Literature

We spent some time at the Temple of Literature and an art museum the other day. We saw more wonderful bonsai trees and pots, some even with ponds.

The gardens were cool with orchids and great trees.

Stone turtles are lined up under the roofs and live ones are in the pond!

In our apartment!

We finally moved into our apartment after some cleaning and getting a new mattress. It was quite an experience buying a mattress in a foreign country in a language we don't understand and then negotiating how it was to be delivered to our apartment. We figured it out and it was delivered to our building on the back of a motorbike. Sorry I didn't bring my camera for that!
We now have wireless Internet here and cable TV. We are not big TV watchers, but we do have the Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel, so that's cool.



One of two bathrooms. They look identical and are about 10 feet away from each other. The shower, as is common in Vietnam, just goes on the floor and down a floor drain.

View to the left of our balcony. We don't hang out on it much. It is a little scary and too hot out now.

View from balcony to the right.

Our bedroom, AC on wall and slider door to balcony. We have two other bedrooms. One has a bed but no mattress yet. The other room is pretty much empty and we don't use it.

Our dining/living room area. The blue wall with white molding striped wall is really something!

That mural of houses is all made of different pieces of different colored stones!

Living room area.

Kitchen. We have not cooked anything here yet. Frankly, it is cheaper to eat out.

Some pictures of Hanoi

We went for a walk downtown by Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi.

Near the older part of the city.

Ngoc Son Temple.

Exploring the Big C supermarket. A massive store where you can buy electronics, food, clothes, bikes, well, everything. It was packed with people and loud. We walked there and we arrived covered in sweat.

If you were in Mr. Godfrey's class in 7th grade you know about this fashion style in Korea and Japan. Looks like the same holds true in Vietnam. English words on a T-shirt are in style. It doesn't matter if they make sense or not.