Hanoi (2)

Take the bus back to Hanoi in the morning and check into the hostel. At noon, I went to Ngõ Đồng Xuân Dongxuan Street for lunch. On the way, I saw a picture of the entrance of the traffic police brigade in Figure 1, warning everyone to pay attention to traffic safety, but it was too bloody. Dongxuan Street is full of street stalls, very grounded. I came here to eat the famous bún ốc snail noodle soup. The small shop was full of people, and I needed some change at the end of the checkout. The sister sitting next to me kindly changed the change for me. After eating the snail noodle soup, I ordered a bowl of sweet soup from the nearby dessert shop. There are many small vendors selling rice, grains and fresh fruits and vegetables in the surrounding vegetable market.

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Afterwards, stroll around the Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, where there are square dancers, badminton players, shuttlecock kickers, and runners everywhere. The aunts and uncles dancing in the square dance by the river can be intoxicated, and the Coke is in it, and they are happy to watch.

The little Vietnamese girl Linh who helped me arrange the itinerary two or three days ago took me to eat delicious food again in the evening, and she also brought her dog. Bánh cuốn Vietnamese steamed rice roll is a common snack in northern Vietnam. It is a food rolled with rice rolls wrapped in pork or other ingredients. It is usually eaten with sprouts and fish sauce. There are similar foods in Guangxi and Yunnan in southern China.

After eating, I went to meet a new friend. He is German and moved to Hanoi in 2015 because of his Vietnamese girlfriend. He drove me on a motorcycle to witness the crowd-crowded spectacle of Vietnam's 2-1 victory over the Philippines to win the semi-finals of the Southeast Asian Football Championship. Vietnamese people, men, women and children, all rode motorcycles, wore red clothes, held Vietnamese flags, had stickers on their faces, and blew horns to celebrate victory. Sitting on the motorcycle, people passing by who I didn't know all clapped and shouted "Vietnam Champion" to celebrate, and brought us their big national flags and haircuts. No matter where we turn, we will be blocked by another wave of people, and we will be trapped in the motorcycle army for nearly an hour before we can fight out. This is the craziest experience since this trip.

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Several travel friends I met before recommended the Little Charm Hostel where I live now. The environment is really good, and it has the best free buffet breakfast I have ever eaten: fruits, salads, and freshly made Vietnamese sandwich. After breakfast, take the bus to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, One Pillar Pagoda and Ba Dinh Square.

When I went to dinner, it was the first time I saw a restaurant with a long line at the door. The pho bo beef noodle soup recommended by a local friend can also be eaten with super hard short fried dough sticks. It is probably an online celebrity restaurant. After that, I sat on a small bench at a street stall and ate dessert peanut and coconut glutinous rice ball soup.

In the morning, I went to a weekend class to volunteer to teach English. Vietnamese children aged 4-10 are very cute. After teaching for a long time, I haven't taught for a long time, and I can't keep up with my voice and energy. When it was over, I found a nearby barber shop to cut my hair.

At noon, I ate bánh xèo fried shrimp cakes and dessert. For dinner, I ate the bun cha and long mung bean cake that I had before. When I came out by the lake to see the street performance of the Vietnamese boy group influenced by K-pop, there were many young people onlookers.

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On the morning of the 9th, I ate fried glutinous rice cakes and cucumber slices. I met another Filipino donkey friend on the sofa surfing software. He is an IT programmer. He also started his own business and designed a service for printing wedding photos through Instagram, as well as many other side jobs. The company sent him on a business trip to Hanoi to see if he could telework. His parents separated when he was very young, but there is no such thing as legal divorce in the Philippines because it is a Catholic country. After that, I went to experience a Vietnamese movie theater and watched Fantastic Beast. Before the start, the local commercials and trailers in Vietnam were broadcast for about 20 minutes. Had Thai curry rice for lunch.

In the afternoon, I met a donkey friend in Harbin. He was a senior student at Peking University. He was recruiting to major in broadcasting and hosting in high school, and later transferred to the philosophy department. In my sophomore year, I started to start a business in various fields. I worked in economic venture capital for a while, and felt that it was too conscientious. Later, I started a business with an alumnus who was 20 years older than him, and created a K-12 education platform, focusing on third- and fourth-tier cities. Famous teachers record video lectures online, annual membership. He has many good ideas about the education industry and is much more mature than his peers. He often travels alone around the world, and shared with me a lot of experience in using couch software. After that, we went to eat bánh gối pillow cake, bánh tôm shrimp cake and other fried food together.

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When I was buying sweet potato and banana pancakes on the roadside on the way back to the Youth Hostel, there were a lot of people in the queue, all of them locals, and I couldn’t get my turn even after waiting for a long time. So I asked the two little girls next to me if they could speak English, and their English was pretty good. They took the initiative to help me and the proprietress order something, and when they were done, they added me to WhatsApp. If I had any questions in Hanoi, I could ask her anytime. So we sat on the small bench next to us and chatted while eating. One of the little girls is from Hanoi and is in her early 20s. She has worked as a tour guide, customer service in the hotel industry, and also in the IT industry. Now she takes economics classes at night and Italian during the day. She wants to study art in Italy. The Vietnamese government supports the tuition fees, but she still doesn’t know herself well want to do something. She likes to watch American dramas to learn English. She once went to Thailand to teach English for two months. She is interested in many things, different cultures and food.

The next day she drove me to the International Hotel by the West Lake to see the scenery, and also took me to eat a lot of delicious food: xôi mung bean glutinous rice, bean curd, almond longan tofu, red bean and mung bean porridge. In the afternoon, I rode a motorbike and took me to West Lake where local young people like to go to a secret gathering place. She said that when she was in a bad mood, she would come here to look at the lake and smoke marijuana. I am like a bosom friend, I never thought I could have so many conversations with a 23-year-old Vietnamese girl, she shared with me all kinds of confusion and overwhelm in her life, although I am also quite confused, but I still gave her a lot of advice, hoping to help her. In the evening, she went with several of her friends to eat mỳ gà tần chicken heart instant noodles, which is popular among young people.

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Recently, several friends asked me if I was going to stay and work in Vietnam. No, I was stuck here, waiting for the Taiwan entry permit, but I couldn’t get it. Here I have to complain about the Taiwan Immigration Agency. Because I am unemployed and cannot issue a work certificate, the only way to prove the funds is to freeze the 50,000 RMB deposit. I originally planned to go to Taiwan in October, so I issued a deposit certificate in September and frozen it until the end of October. But because of the two-month temporary work in Nanjing, I had to postpone my trip to Taiwan until November. Because the deposit certificate has expired, it can only be reopened. Taiwan stipulates that the application can only be submitted one month after the opening on November 1, so it can only be delayed until December. After I submitted it in early December, I returned for the first time and said that I needed to submit a travel itinerary. After I submitted a rough itinerary, I returned on the 6th and said that the itinerary I submitted was not detailed enough, and I needed to submit a daily planned accommodation itinerary. Okay, I hurriedly resubmitted on the same day, but they didn't work on weekends. They replied to me this morning and said: The travel time has passed since the 8th and asked me to change the date. I immediately changed the reply to the past. This afternoon I finally received an email saying that I have passed the application for the Taiwan Entry Permit, and I just need to print it out. I am so excited! I can finally book a flight ticket. I glanced at the email and said to check the information. Fortunately, I carefully checked my Taiwan Pass number and the number on the Taiwan Pass. I was so mad that a number was wrongly typed, and 0 became 8. Asked Taobao customer service, they said that the Taiwan Immigration Agency will make mistakes, and it will take two days to make changes again. How much does Taiwan not want me to go there? !

After several struggles, I decided not to wait in Hanoi for the Taiwan Immigration Agency to change my Taiwan registration number. Anyway, Hanoi has enough food to eat. On the morning of the 11th, I checked the air ticket from Ho Chi Minh City to Taiwan. The cheapest one was on Friday, cheaper than flying from Hanoi. Last night I booked a flight to Ho Chi Minh City today and to Taiwan on Friday. The irony is: the Taiwan Immigration Agency originally said that it would take two days to change it, but it turned out to be corrected and sent to my email this morning. Why is it not efficient when it should be efficient? It’s okay to tease me! On the last day in Hanoi, I ate Huian-style Vietnamese sandwiches at noon, dessert pastries, King Roti in the afternoon, and mung bean glutinous rice xoi.

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It started to rain when we went to the airport, and the plane was delayed for two hours. It happened to be the first match between Vietnam and Malaysia in the football final tonight, and there were all kinds of people watching football in the airport terminal. For the Vietnamese people, the flight delay is a good thing, they can still watch the ball.