We woke up late this morning to a temperature of +23, with a projection to go to 32 today. It was not overcast today - in fact more sunshine today than any other day so far. 

We went for our last breakfast and thanked the breakfast staff who have been with us every day.

We gathered our belongings - more than we arrived with for sure! We checked out & the hotel will store our luggage until we leave for the airport tonight. 

Just a casual day wandering around. It seems to be a market day today with extra vendors in the street. We revisited some of the places we checked out earlier this week as well, taking a few more pictures, etc. The one building seems to be a wholesale market, selling bulk goods to people who then sell them in the street markets.  Also this market building had a lot more food for sale, including the live variety, such as frogs and turtles.   The street around Hoan Kiem Lake remain closed today & there were tourists everywhere - again mostly Europeans and Asians but we have heard a few more Americans today (the southern drawls gave them away)!

We stopped for a break at the Hanoi 1930 Bistro ov erlooking the lake. We had a Hanoi beer, strawberry smoothie and shared an order of crab spring rolls (which were delicious!) Turns out we spent a bit of time at this location by the lake the last day or so. The Haagen Dazs restaurant & last night's supper restaurant are across the way. 

I tried another egg coffee today, the chocolate egg coffee variety........so good.

We also used the HSBC ATM across the street yesterday. We had tried another ATM but it didn't like the answers we gave to it's unusual questions! The HSBC ATM was popular as we were in line to use one of the 2 machines. This time it was straight forward. We took out 1,000,000 VND, which cost us about $60 CDN & $5 in bank fees, which was much cheaper than what we paid at the currency exchange at Vancouver Airport.

We wandered around the lake area for the rest of the afternoon. Lots of people also leisurely wandering around today.

A young Vietnamese man asked if he could talk with us a bit to practice his English, which was actually quite good already.

He had a nice chat with Greg about how we were making out on our visit, why we came here (Greg showed him the pic of the snow in front of the house), and general topics like sports & language. 

For our last supper in Hanoi, We had scoped out a restaurant earlier today and actually were able to find it again! Chairs & tables - regular height, menu items with lots of pictures & descriptions in English - excellent start. We ordered 2 of the cold shrimp spring rolls then Greg ordered the Cha Ca, Grilled Catfish and I ordered Bun Cha, the grilled pork. We thought the portions of fish & pork were generous and both were very good. Along with a beer and a coke the bill came out to 515,000 VND ($29.46 CDN).

We had a little time to kill so it was back to Beer Street. Malibu Rum & Pineapple Juice and a bottle of Bia Vet beer, for both, 70,000 VND ($3.95 CDN), Happy Hour! Though it was only 7pm the street was already getting very crowded.

Having seemingly eaten & drank everything we opted to go to the hotel and just wait for our airport shuttle. We chatted with two Belgian couples who were also waiting. Good conversation about what all had seen & done as well as talk about our home countries. (No, they said it does not get as cold in Belgium in Winter as in Canada!)

It took our Grab (Uber) driver just over 30 minutes to get to Noi Bai Airport. $15 USD. On arrival it looked like chaos to get into Terminal 2 with people & luggage everywhere. The guards were only letting departing passengers through, so we were good. It took us 75 minutes to check in, drop off our luggage, depart with Immigration and go through a very long line for security. Our flight is delayed 40 minutes so we had about 2 hours to kill. There were stores galore post-security....duty free stores, souvenir stores, local handicraft stores and of course, some restaurants, including Burger King, which looked VERY expensive!

There are 4 flights plus ours, making 5 flights going to Tokyo Narita tonight within 1 hour...all different flights leaving at different times. Of course with our 40 minute delay, our flight will be the last to depart. That doesn't sound too awful until we realized we will be the 5th arriving flight (and that's just from Hanoi!), which means we will at least be #5 to go through Immigration on arrival! All flights are quite large so fingers crossed they have enough officers on duty when we get there.  This is a redeye flight, now departing at about 1:00am with arrival around 8am local, in Tokyo.

Some thoughts and learnings from our time in Hanoi, Vietnam:

-Red lights and road lines are only suggestions

-When crossing streets, traffic will almost always miss you, they don't stop for crosswalks

-Not a lot of English on signage, even in tourist areas

-Food culture is awesome

-Coffee is great, if not strong

-Tourism & service industry is good and on the right track

-People are very friendly

-Tropical climate is just right for Canadians escaping Winter