Good-bye Thailand, Hello Vietnam (Hanoi)

Today started off really early with a flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. We had 4 hours to kill once we were in Bangkok, but since the airport is so far away from downtown, and the traffic is horrible and unpredictable, we had to spend that looking around the airport and doing some reading. It actually passed by quite quickly. It was about 2 hours or so to fly from Bangkok to Hanoi. This was my first visit to a Communist/Socialist country. When we first got to the airport we had to get our visas. We had the visa on arrival, which meant we had to show approval paperwork and pay $25 each for a 30 day visa there at the airport. It was kind of intimidating. Everyone who works for the government wears a military like uniform. We also had to exchange money. For $100 we got over 1.6 Million Vietnamese Dong (see below).My first impression was not a good one. Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, was full of pollution and trash. Just walking around the city I had a hard time breathing from all of the exhaust from the 2 million + motorbikes. It was crazy. Most people riding the bikes had masks over their mouths. I wished I had one. It was a big culture shock coming into Hanoi. Even though Hanoi was 1000 years old, and definitely had some scenic sites, it was for the most part an ugly city. The streets were very narrow and hard to cross (pretty much you walked and kept moving and eventually you got across). If you tried to wait for the traffic to stop, you would have never cross the road. The houses were all very tall, but very narrow. Don't get me wrong, Hanoi had a lot of interesting things there, but it was hard to get past all of the other stuff. Our guide told us that Ha Noi meant in the middle of a river. The red river flows through the city. We were on our own for the rest of the afternoon and night, so we decided to go venture out and walk around the old quarter. An old lady helped me across the street, which was kind of ironic since usually it was the other way around, but I was very grateful. We went to the Ben Ngo Son Pagoda, which sat in the Hoan Kiem Lake (or the Lake of the Recovered Sword). According to legend, the gods gave emperor Le Thai To a magical sword to defeat the Chinese invaders, the sword was given to him from a giant tortoise, and after he defeated the Chinese, he was in this lake again, and the giant tortoise came up and snatched the sword. Also in the lake was a Tortoise pagoda. We then tried to go to a place in the guidebook that said had really good Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup that is awesome), but it wasn't open. We ended up at a place near the lake which had ok food. We then walked around the night market and went back to the hotel. I was feeling pretty apprehensive about Vietnam at this point, but I eventually warmed up to it later in the week.