I took the bunk bed sleeper bus from Hanoi to Hue. I’m really going to miss the sidewalk chickens. I’ll be walking along, and then there’s a chicken or three pecking around the sidewalk. Often bedraggled and of a cute miniature stature, they are almost all unique, and rather grand under the street grime. I’m sure that I’ll encounter many more sidewalk chickens, but the ones in Hanoi particularly caught my eye.

looking sharp

Hanoi is a whirlwind of sensory information, and is too much to take in in one visit. It has a crumbling, grubby magnificence that imbues it with layers of character. It’s easy to glaze over under the onslaught of sensory overload. I feel like it’s hiding a million potential discoveries, if only one had the time. I could easily kill a month here, wandering and eating my way through the streets. This town has so much good food. Two weeks into this trip, and I haven’t even begun crack the dazzling but baffling Vietnamese street food scene. It would have helped to have learned some food vocabulary before arriving, but I’m sort of lazy that way. I splurged on two egg coffees on my last day (relative splurge: they only cost about $1.25, but I’m also trying to limit my daily caffeine intake), one iced and one hot. I’m not actually sure if the yolk is in there, but the egg white is frothed up and folded on top. My iced coffee had a greater froth volume than coffee. It’s quite delicious.