Drink Here or We Kill Puppies!

So I've been traveling as much as I have been able to the past few years, and never really ever got on this blogging bandwagon, but after reading my buddy Taylor's blog for the past few months of his traveling in South America, I decided it was pretty cool to read about the random adventures and times traveling.  So here I am now, sitting in Hanoi, blogging about my time.  

Well Hanoi has been interesting to say the least.  After 17 hours of flying and missing New Years Eve, I was ready to get out and see the country.  I've been to Vietnam once before, about 10 years ago, and man it has changed.  The once dirt roadish areas and smaller town is now bustling and crowded.  The empty streets that use to be full of corner stalls to eat and dogs roaming around are all paved with big hotels, restaurants and  weird guys hauling speakers with mics so they can sing in the middle of the streets like pop idols.  

Seeing Hanoi and the surrounding areas have been eye opening.  The way the small country is trying so hard to catch up to western standards leaves a lot of gaps, and it's weird to see how some culture is lost in the big cities when all this happens so quickly.  But getting outside of the city has been really cool, taking small row boats around caves and mountainous areas has been beautiful.  The time in the city has been fun too, I ran into some great dutch people while roaming around and eating by myself and ended up spending the night with them discovering local joints and clubs.  We had to try the local corner beer, Bia Hoi (pronounced, and yelled by me, as BEER AHOY!), which cost a whopping 20 cents a glass and then went to a bar called Half Man Half Noodle, with the slogan, "drink here or we'll kill puppies."  A good time for sure, but definitely now looking forward to the South.  North has been cool but definitely looking forward to seeing some beach communities like Nha Trang.  It should be an interesting change, I'm going from an area that has a shit ton of traffic to a town with about 5 times that amount. so we'll see how this goes.

Oh, and for any of those traveling here soon, i've learned the morse code of honking in Vietnam.  They don't use blinkers, only horns for the most part, and this is what they mean:

Short amount of horn honks in a row- I'm going left or right, watch out for me
Large amount of horn honks in a row- I'm going straight and i'm behind you, keep you're line or i'll proabbly hit you.
 One LONG horn honk- I'm going too fast and can't stop so get out of my way
Horn honking and flashing brights- The equivalent of the american's use of the horn and the phrase "are you fucking kidding me?"

Keep it in mind.

Oh and for those of you wondering about my title, got it from my good friend Christina from this comic:
http://www.explosm.net/comics/2182/

Cheers everyone!  Onto Saigon!