Kai and Noah's Tokyo Livin: May 2013

I finally got my travel wish! This year's Golden Week break was spent exploring Hanoi. The city has an amazing energy, it's crazy loud with constant honking, tons of street food and lots of fun local shopping. I got to haggle on every item purchased so of course I was in my glory. The city was wonderful, so much so that I am already starting to plug away on my Ho Chi Min City campaign.

Stylin with his conical hat. Although we bought one for Noah to he sadly wanted no part of wearing it.

Preparing to cross the street, which is a lot like playing the old atari game frogger. There are literally motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws and people coming at you from every direction and very few traffic lights or cross walks. We quickly realized to cross the street easily always follow the walking vendors- those ladies could weave in and out of traffic like nobody's business.

Checking out the local markets. We didn't see any supermarkets rather different vendors selling items daily. Although it was extremely hot, surprising nothing smelled, yet it wasn't exactly appetizing either.

Traditional items that none of us were brave enough to try.

Lots of interesting fruit

The amount of motorcycles was astonishing. We've never seen anything like it.

This little bean gave his mother quite the workout on this trip. Because the streets were so loud he wanted to be carried everywhere and only by me, but with a smile like that how could I possibly refuse him.

Hoa Lo Prison, also known as Hanoi Hilton by U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War- where John McCain was held on and off for 5 years. They even have his flight suit on display there, which Naoto and I found to be pretty creepy. Although the description of that era was pretty sugar coated. Bottom line the prison was totally scary.

The start of our temple explorations.

Ngoc Son Temple

Putting on quite the show. I believe this one is where they were pretending to be fighting superheros.

Temple of Literature

Shopping for goodies at the gift shop- yep even temples have gift shops.

Serious partying going on in the hotel pool. These two little monsters really tore it up in there. At one point we were kindly asked to quiet down.

Noah Bean photobombing mine and Kai's selfie.

The snorkel that follows us everywhere. He even uses it in the bathtub, which now a days has become our own personal ocean.

Thang Long Water Puppet Theater, which was completely awesome. Noah and I were totally enthralled while Naoto and Kai slept. They missed an amazing performance.

Puppeteers emerging from the background at the final curtain call. Noah was so cute, when the audience starting clapping the excitement in his eyes was magical. I think he was clapping the loudest of all.