Sunny Days and Foreign DJ's

As I wrote in the last blog, I had two language lessons this weekend. Technically they were my last two classes but I'll be seeing Viet next weekend when Lily is here so I guess then will reallly be goodbye. On Saturday and Sunday we spent a lot of time around Hoan Kiem and the Old Quarter. I still had a few more gifts to buy and was pleasantly surprised with some of the things Viet and I stumbled upon during our walk. This weekend was also unseasonably warm; the past few weeks have finally been cool with temperatures in the low to mid 60's but both Saturday and Sunday had temperatures around the mid 70's and it even got to 81 degrees today. At first it the warm air was nice but when the sun came out, it felt like summer again which I don't ever want to experience in December. Anyway, I can't complain too much since the weather could certainly have been a lot worse but I do prefer the cooler temperatures we've had more recently.

On Saturday we had banh my for lunch at our normal spot in the Old Quarter. I think this month is high season now because we saw a lot more tourists than in other months and there were certainly more tourists at the banh mi shop. After lunch we found a great tea shop (by complete accident, I might add) and Viet found a tea he really liked called "Panda Tea" (or something like that). It's probably no secret to my mom that I was searching for jasmine tea and they even brewed some for us at their cute tea brewing station. The shop also had local goods like different soaps and traditional dried fruits so it was a very nice place to be in.

On Sunday Viet wrote an extensive list of good restaurants and street food spots near the hotel Lily will be staying at in Hanoi. We even walked past it today on a street we've been on before. The street our hotel (The Gondola Hotel) is on is called Hang Hanh which is named for it's original purpose. Onion selling. Today, Hang Hanh is very well known for all the cafe's but still holds the name that commemorates it's onion history. There were truly a ton of cafe's so it will be a good place for Lily to stay. As I said before, I'm going to meet her there after school and we'll get dinner too, which is where all of Viet's recommendations come in handy. He even wrote down the number one bun cha restaurant in Hanoi but that there is a shop just next door that also sells bun cha. He showed me on the map that the store on the corner is the "fake" one and the store just next to it is the true best place to have bun cha in Hanoi. If Lily and I go, I'll be

very sure to go to the right one.

For lunch we had pho ga (pho with chicken) at one of the spots he wrote down on his list. It was the first pho I've had with chicken in Vietnam which is interesting because back in the US, I usually only eat chicken pho. I think I now prefer pho bo (pho with beef) so I think I'll take Lily to the pho bo place that Viet wrote down for us. He told me that when he was a kid, the pho (bo) place that he recommended sold pho for 3000 dong! That's barely even a calculable value in USD! 3000 dong comes out to about 13 cents which is insane! Of course, that was about 15 years ago so the price has increased now, but you can still get delicious meals for about 25000 dong, which is just a little more than a dollar.

This afternoon when I was heading back I saw many people who were going to the Ecopark for an event in the evening. According to Dung, they had some event during the day but were hiring a very famous DJ at night (until 1 AM) to play in the Ecopark. Sure enough, it's about 10:30 now and there's some obscenely loud music playing. It's been going on since around 5:30, just after I got back home and once it got dark, they turned on these big searchlights. The event isn't even inside the Ecopark, it's at least a mile away, but you can see it from our apartment with the searchlights, and it's so loud that the music sounds like it could be playing in our apartment. It seems like the

worst idea to hold this event on a Sunday night when everyone has school and work in the morning but for whatever reason, this is how it turned out. With how loud the music is, I can't help but think of all the other people in the 1-2 mile radius of the area. I'm sure people in Bat Trang can hear the music so it must be heard that far out in every other direction too. At least it sounds like people are having fun; there's been lots of cheering and yelling and I even heard the crowd singing along to a remix of Adele's "Hello" just a few minutes ago.

Well, I'm quite tired after my long weekend so I'm off to (try to) sleep. And now as I type this they're setting off fireworks.. It's going to be a long night. Besides this moment now I had a great weekend and I hope everyone else did too. Happy Sunday!