Vietnam was my favorite place to visit.  For starters, the hotel we stayed at was rated 5 stars and it wasn’t necessarily due to the unbelievable brekkie (although that certainly helped). The staff treated us like we were Will and Kate… like royalty. Every time we approached the hotel, they would kindly open the door and ask about our day. They even greeted us with a beverage upon arrival and made sure we left our bags for them to carry.

Brekkie was unreal.  We had an array of unlimited freshly squeezed juice, coffee, eggs, pancakes, toast, poh soup and – most importantly – unlimited FREE WIFI!

Did you know?
– Jeremy bought a custom made suit in Hanoi and has only wore it once, whereas Rob bought the same suit and has yet to take it off during the working hours of the week (Monday – Friday).
– Jeremy made two stops on his way out; one in San Francisco and one in South Korea. On his flight to South Korea, he saw Mt. McKinley from his airplane seat.
– While we were there, the city was celebrating the 40th anniversary of winning the war against the United States. There were banners all over the city similar to the picture below.

– According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hanoi will be the fastest growing city in the world in terms of GDP growth from 2008 to 2025.
– The Hỏa Lò Prison (also sarcastically known by Americans as the “Hanoi Hilton”) was where John McCain spent 5 1/2 years as a POW. Below is a picture of McCain’s flight suit and parachute, along with the rules every inmate must abide by.

I bet you knew…
– Jeremy and Rob were done shopping after the first store we walked in, while I was eager to take advantage of the massively discounted clothing shops (relative to the massively overpriced Australian retail market).
– Even in a third-world, communist country, the guys found a way to watch the Broncos game. Die Hard Fans.

– Scooters were EV..E.RY.Wh.E.R…e. (It’s like trying to play leap frog but the cost of getting hit is much more severe).

– We, Americans, towered over every single person in sight.  Even the tables on the street were too small for us to sit. These kind of tables were very common on the compact streets of Hanoi, but it certainly made for good people watching!

The only minor setback we had was during our last meal in Hanoi. Vietnamese people were always trying to get us to eat at their restaurant or buy their water, their clothing, their goods or anything else they were selling. Since we were in a bit of a rush to catch our ride to the airport, a restaurant owner easily persuaded us to sit down and order the BBQ’d beef for 3 people. After finishing our meal, the owner pulled out his cell phone, calculated the total, and hesitantly said we owed 1,000,000 Vietnamese Dong (or about 50 USD). If we hadn’t just spent the last 3-4 days there, we probably wouldn’t have noticed much of anything. But considering we had a similar meal the day before for about 1/10th the price and, more importantly, we had very little dong left to spend (our next stop was Cambodia), we weren’t too happy. Jeremy and I argued with the owner while Rob went back to the ATM to get additional dong out. He wouldn’t budge.

I guess we learned our lesson.. Always ask for a menu or the price first before eating.