Morning Tour: It took much of the week, but I was able to arrange for a tour on the last day of our Hanoi trip through a travel agency I found on the internet. After some convincing, Dragon agreed to join me, so we met in the hotel lobby at 3:50 a.m. before heading down to street level to find our tour guide. We located him right away and hopped in a taxi for a quick ride across town on the nearly deserted streets to the morning flower market.
Flower Market: This small part of the city is designated for the sale of flowers, and many tightly-packed stalls lined the street bursting with the vibrant colors of many differing types of flowers, imported from all over the world. The customers buy in bulk, either for use in large businesses, such as hotels, or for resale to smaller establishments.
Food Market: A short cab ride from the flower market brought us to the morning food market. For as crowded and busy as the flower market seemed to be, the food market was twice so, particularly in the seafood section. We struggled to make our way through the sea of people, seeing all manners of meats, fish, fruits and vegetables being sold. It was definitely a hive of activity in an otherwise quite city.
Long Bien Bridge: Running alongside the food market is a bridge I had read about and was interested in seeing, so we made a detour from our scheduled tour to get an overview of the food market below, as well as the vehicles passing over and underneath the bridge as the city slowly awakened. Shortly after our departure, the food stalls were taken down and the roads returned to vehicular traffic for the morning rush hour commute.
Exercisers: We next headed on foot to nearby Hoàn Kiếm Lake to observe morning exercises there biking, running, strength training, doing aerobics, Tai Chi, etc. On our way we passed through the last remaining gate to the old city of Hanoi.
Railroad Station: With time still on our tour, I asked to head over to the railroad station located nearby. We did get views of the station itself and the rail yard from beyond the outer perimeter, but access to the rail yard itself was strictly forbidden. Our tour originally included a tradition phở (noodle soup) breakfast, but we decided to skip it and go back to the hotel to get breakfast there with Peep instead, since the noodle soup is the same as is consumed for breakfast in Laos.
Kim Liên Pagoda: Peep and I decided to spend our final few hours in Hanoi visiting a couple more sites. Our first stop was at the Kim Liên Pagoda. This temple was originally built as a palace for the princess Từ Hoa in the 12th century. Following her death, the palace was converted to a Buddhist temple and had undergone several renovations and expansions, achieving its current form in the late eighteenth century.
Quán Sứ Pagoda: We next traveled to Quán Sứ Pagoda, built as an embassy in the fifteenth century during the Lê Dynasty to receive foreign ambassadors. A temple was included to give the ambassadors, who all practiced Buddhism, a place to worship. Today, only the renovated temple remains, and it serves as the headquarters of the Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam.
Trip Home: From the temple we returned to our hotel to meet up with the rest of our travelling companions for the return flight. After another lengthy cab ride and short flight, we found ourselves back in Vientiane for another overnight stay. We made the return drive to Savannakhet on Wednesday, completing another enjoyable journey to a foreign land.