There are 8 million people in Hanoi and 7 million scooters. That, my friends, is a lot of scooters. When you smash that many scooters into tight narrow streets that date back several centuries, the traffic is relentless. Scooters buzz everywhere … dashing in and out of cars, onto what little sidewalk there might be and up the wrong side of the road. It is amazing that there isn’t a crash every two seconds.

Where this can be tricky is as a pedestrian. The sidewalks are not sidewalks, but rather parking places for scooters … or restaurants … or both. So you have to navigate down the narrow road along with the scooters, cars, buses, and trucks. What gets difficult is when you need to cross the road. There are no breaks in traffic and you have to have your head on a swivel at all times as a scooter might be coming from any direction. You learn pretty quickly that there is definitely a technique for getting across.

First, you must adopt a slow even pace. No speeding up or slowing down. No running. No darting. No changing direction. These are guaranteed to get you crushed. Secondly, you need to develop the all-powerful wizard hand. You calmly raise your hand up and point it at the oncoming doom. Miraculously, your magical powers cause all the scooters to part and move around you. Even cars will be pushed aside by your powers. Buses … not so much.

I had no idea I had these magical powers, but, fingers crossed, they will continue to work.

I had scheduled a street food tour at 4 pm the day I arrived. I figured it would do me some good to get out a bit, walk around, and eat some food before the jet lag set in. I unpacked the bike and tested that everything still worked. It did! Yeah!

It was about a 25-minute walk to the office where the tour started so I headed out a bit early since I didn’t know my way around. It wasn’t all that hot, but super sticky and humid. It must be ungodly hot in the summer here. After a few missed turns in the Old Quarter, I found the tour office and a very cheerful chap, Long, greeted me and told me 2 other people would be joining. I waited a while and then he said we would meet them at the first restaurant. So we started to head out. Then he said they wanted to change to the 5 o’clock tour, so he told me to wait and disappeared back in the office. He came back and said the boss said “no can do” on the switch-a-roo so we would meet them. Off we went.

They were a lovely couple from Chicago who had been in Hanoi for a week or so. It was nice to have some company on the tour. The first stop was at Nguyen Xiêu, where we had a classic Vietnamese dish “Bún Chà.” Long gave us the instructions on how to eat it properly and we dug in.

Next up was Phở Cuốn where we had a Phở roll and a bowl of Phở Trôn. The Phở Cuốn was basically a spring roll, but the rice wrapping is quite a bit thicker and puffier than what you might expect in a Thai restaurant. I liked the Phở bowl the best. We also got a lesson on how to pronounce Phở. Evidently if you do it like most Westerners do, it means “bitch.” I guess you have to move your tone up and slowly bring it down low stretching out the end of the word. I am not sure I have it down and am still probably ordering a bowl of bitch.

I’ve already gotten vague on whether we had coffee before or after Phở Cuốn. Damn jet lag. But I had salted coffee that was pretty tasty especially because we asked Long have them be less sweet. They love their condensed milk in their coffee here.

The final stop on our tour was for some Bánh Mi. As a side note, I might give up trying to put the correct accents on all the Vietnamese words as most of the accents don’t exist on my computer and I am already falling behind on the blog. Also, you will probably note the writing is a tad worse than usual as I left my editor behind in New Zealand. She might have to come back and fix stuff. Doh.

At the end of that stop, I briefly thought about heading over to check out the night market, but the jet lag said negatory. Plus, I had an early wake-up call to go on my photography expedition the next day. After waving the magic hand and miraculously stopping or swerving all the on-coming scooters, I made it home and crashed.

Not a bad start to my Vietnam adventure.