I flew back to Vietnam on Thursday morning to meet my friend Makayla in Hanoi. Originally I had planned to travel for the month completely alone, but I put it out there to a bunch of friends to join me for some of the trip and Makayla was able to join for this portion! 

Our first order of business was Egg Coffee and Pho at Cafe Pho Co, a rooftop restaurant overlooking the lake in Hanoi. The Egg Coffee was essentially a frothy sweet latte but really nice tasting. The Pho was excellent, as usual. This restaurant was hard to find, we had to go through a fabric store and up about 4 flights of stairs for the view: 

After brunch, we walked around the lake in Hanoi. It was beautiful, with a nice green colour. We ventured to the temple in the middle of the lake and had a look around, and had to rent robes to cover up. 

Later in the afternoon, we bought tickets for the water puppet show which we heard was the thing to do in Vietnam. It was an interesting experience where somehow the puppet operators put on a whole show with puppets over a body of water. There were fireworks, cool music and different kinds of animals in the show. We watched the show at the main theatre, the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. 

For dinner we headed to a nicer restaurant for a feast of Green Papaya salad and egg rolls. It was a splurge at $4 each! 

We had an early night because we were headed for Ha Long Bay the next day – a beautiful place with spotty internet. Catch up post soon!