Getting friendly with the locals - Hanoi

Pretty much every time we went out it was an adventure - at one particular restaurant no one spoke english, and they seemed content with not making eyecontact so that they didn't have to serve us. After much confusion (i.e. them coming over and asking our order about 4 times, over the period of about an hour), the four of us eventually ended up with one plate of fried rice, two beers, shrimp paste, and a couple bowls of soup. oh, and a bottle of rice whiskey, which was strangely the only thing they understood.. anyways, we were SUPPOSED to have 4 main dishes (none of which included fried rice), 4 beers, soy sauce, 3 bowls of soup and a salad. after they brought the fried rice out and we had inhaled it we sat around for a while looking at each other going..."do you think they're going to bring more out??" we finally determined that we should just pay and get out of there, which the servers seemed more than happy to facilitate. it was an enjoyable experience apart from the somewhat rude american being a impatient despite the amusingness of the whole experience.

We ended up hiring two cyclos (bikes with a two person seat attached to the front) to cycle us around the old quarter of hanoi for half an hour. in our hungry and half drunken rice-whiskey induced state, we did lots of waving and cheering and eventually got the cyclo drivers to bring us to a fresh beer bar. Despite the fact that fresh beer places are EVERYWHERE, they had one in particular - so, onto the highway we went (these cyclos are slower than the pedestrians...and the guy biking us looked like he might keel over and die - he was 65 years old). cars zoomed past us, and eventually we made it to a vietnamese bar (that looked like a flourescent cafeteria!). we invited the cyclo drivers in and we had a brilliant time. we were the only foreigners and the whole bar ended up being our friends. the owner's son invited us to his house for the weekend and bought us round after round of beer, along with snacks ... the young cyclo driver got quite drunk, and by the end of the night Dorian, one of the guys i was with, ended up biking the cyclo home with the driver in the seat...it was fabulous. by the end the cyclo drivers were our best friends and refused money (which is so refreshing in vietnam). it was brilliant...i love meeting locals!