Hanoi-> Cat Ba -> Hue

2/12/2011
-Had a crazy night bar hopping in Hanoi with Maxime (awesome french kid i met in the hostel in Hanoi) started at The Factory, tried to see some Vietnamese experimental music, they had a great set up, guitar with multiple distortion pedals, and a deconstructed piano with all sorts of lo-fi synth and laptop based equipment. The soundcheck sounded great, but unfortunately the band never played. Not a huge loss because the factory had the best art i've seen yet (see link) really great surreal dystopian shit, a blunt look at the police state that is Vietnam.
-We asked some expats where the party was, they sent us to a bar on the southside of town, it was pretty dead as well, but Maxime struck up a conversation with two beautiful vietnamese girls, they took us to an illegal bar overlooking the green river, blasting American rap over a pretty decent JBL stack. danced with the girls and Maxime wound up making out with both of them.
-Didn't get back to the hotel until like 2 AM i slept like a rock.
2/13/2011
-woke up with a brutal headache, couldn't hold down breakfast.
-went to the History museum in Hanoi with Maxime, incredible ancient pottery and woodcarvings, saw the opera house which is a sprawling french building, and a beautiful ancient catholic church.
-wandered around the old town for a while looking for a suitable lunch spot. wound up having fried Spring Rolls, Maxime had a steak.
-we went back to the hotel for a minute, Maxime wanted to rest, so i wandered around looking for a good leather jacket in the fashion district, full of chinese shit, mostly too weird and expensive for me, every store seemed to have the same stuff.
-went to a great restaurant for dinner, Highway 4 had one of the best meals i've had so far, ginger pork with fermented rice.
-watched some french tourists freak out about eating crickets.
-Maxime had to catch a bus to Sapa so we went back to the hotel after dinner, wound up talking politics and economics with my new Norwegian roommate, also talked to british nurse about her travels for the last six months, interesting stories, she'd been on a pretty epic and frenetic journey all over the world.
2/14/2011
-The next day i woke up, and went to the train station trying to arrange tickets to get to Hai Phong, from there to get a boat to Cat Ba Island. there are two train stations in Hannoi and depending on where you're going you need to buy tickets in different places. i was in the right station but they sent me to the other one, when i got back to the right one, they were on lunch.
-wound up booking a bus to Haiphong and a hydrofoil to Cat Ba from the hotel for only $7.
-bought a leather jacket for $30 bucks, its nice, but you get what you pay for, also found a really awesome shirt with a skull and crossbones of psylocibin mushrooms that i really wanted but was way too expensive, they wanted $25 for it.
-Ate a nice lunch with the Norwegian in an old Vietnamese house.
-had tea with him at an excellent and hard to find place overlooking the lake in the center of Hanoi.
-went out to look for a supposed reggae bar but never found it, ate a crappy dinner at a place that was far too western.
-on the walk back a vietnamese guy half kicked me in the street, my only negative experience with any of the Vietnamese, who can at times be terse, but are generally really nice and trustworthy.
-had my last hanoi drink at the factory, hoping to get a hookah, but they were sold out because it was valentines day, the city was crazy full of traffic for the same reason, went to bed early because i had to catch the bus in the morning.
I'm currently in Hue, Cat Ba stories and pictures to come.