If you can't even trust monks, who can you trust?!

(Je dois d'abord m'excuser s'il y a des fautes de frappe, le clavier est tres collant ici)

Well, the frustration with the country is finally catching up. Though I have to admit, we didn't sleep much last night on the train from Da Nang to Ha Noi.
Today was a rather challenging day. First, we arrived in Hanoi at 5am, so we had to sit in the train station to wait for hotels to open so we could check into one. While we waited, we kept having people coming over to offer us taxis and motos, though we told them no, not yet. One guy actually sat beside us and just waited, staring at us (they do a lot of staring there, sometimes I think they don't realise we're people too).
Once we'd found a hotel, we went for a walk and the weather wasn't too hot, so we actually enjoyed ourselves, but as we were walking back to our hotel, two monks came to us, asking for money. At first, I was more than happy to help with a little money, but they wanted a lot! I managed to get out of it, but Nick lost 100,000 Dong (about 7$) in the process (see his blog). The monk was tugging at his money in his wallet! Not a very good impression.

Vers 16h, nous sommes ressortis de l'hotel pour nous promener, comme nous aimons tant le faire. Quelle erreur! C'etait l'heure de pointe, et marcher dans les rues principales de Hanoi pendant l'heure de pointe, c'est du suicide. La rue est completement pleine de cyclos, de motos, d'autos, de bus, qui se disputent la placent, qui klaxonnent et qui n'ont aucune pitie pour les pauvres petits pietons qui essayent de se frayer un chemin. On risque de se faire rouler sur les pieds ou de perdre un bras... ou pire. Le gros probleme, c'est qu'on n'a pas le choix de marcher sur la rue puisque le trottoir est occupe par les gens qui cuisinent, qui mangent, qui travaillent, qui jasent, qui jouent, qui vivent, et par les motos stationnees au hasard. En plus, il y a les motos qui sortent de leur stationnement sans regarder si nous arrivons derriere. De la pure folie!

Finally, to top it off, as we were walking tonight, a guy on a motorbike drove really close to us and tried to grab Nick's bike. Oh yeah, and another guy tried to sell us coins while we were getting our plane tickets for Laos, right in the store. Nick said no three times, then had to actually push him away for him to leave us alone. People in the North are a lot more pushy than in the South, and, tired as we were today, we had very little patience. Let's hope the next few days are better.

Le probleme, c'est qu'on doit rester ici jusqu'au 8 mars, date a laquelle on part pour cinq jours dans le Nord, la province de Ha Giang. On serait partis plus tot, mais on voulait voir un marche, et c'est seulement en fin de semaine. Il faudra s'occuper d'ici-la, trouver des choses qu'on n'a pas encore vues ou faites dans la capitale.

Une chose qui me soulage, c'est qu'on a parle d'horaire aujourd'hui et on s'est mis d'accord qu'il serait mieux d'enlever la Turquie de notre trajet. J'aurais beaucoup aime la voir, mais on n'aurait pas assez de temps pour vraiment l'apprecier et ca nous enleverait du temps ailleurs. On y reviendra!

So let's hope tomorrow brings better things. We've decided to really take it easy and just relax in the hotel room for as long as we want, then get a nice foot massage or something (we never did get a massage in Saigon, it was closed for Tet) then, whatever, relax, no rush, no stress. It's really the best way to go.