Hanoi & Bai Tu Bay

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but the traffic in the major cities of Vietnam is crazy and Hanoi was of course no exception. After an uneventful train journey in more drizzling rain we arrived at Hanoi about mid-day and got a Grab taxi to our hotel in the Old Quarter. Our hotel was called Golden Moon, a very nice mid-range place with not much character but really comfy beds. First impressions of Hanoi were obviously of the traffic but that there was also a cool, quirky undercurrent that you felt as you walked past art shops, egg coffee cafes and weird looking food places. There is a huge lake at the bottom of the old quarter with a busy road that they shut off to traffic on a Sunday. It then fills with families, children doing surveys, young pop acts making music videos, circus performers, young couples and older generations all just enjoying their Sunday together. Obviously one of the first things we did was find pub street as we had heard this was a source of the Bir Hoi tha