Good afternoon everybody, it's Cory here.
I am coming to you from Hanoi, Vietnam.
This is going to be the first of many walking videos in Hanoi, and elsewhere around Vietnam.
But I'm finally getting to it, taken out the GoPro, taken out the stabilizer
Got all mic'd up.
And I'm ready to go, so where am I? Let's take a look.
We're right by this banyan tree.
I think it's a banyan tree.
It's got roots like a banyan tree.
But I'm here in the Thuy Khue Ward of Hanoi, and that's in the Tay Ho District.
And this main road here is the road I live on.
My house is actually maybe a block or two that way?
I just ate.
I'm going to walk along here. So my goal today... huuuuhhh.......
Hi puppy! I got distracted.
*car honking, honking, honking*
Honkin'!
So my goal today is to walk from this street all the way to West Lake.
And West Lake is, I guess, like one road parallel over to the right.
So between this road and that road is kind of like a large neighborhood.
Depending on how far down this street I go.
I'm going to try and not see all of the neighborhood, but definitely get lost in the back alleys.
That's kind of like a temple place.
Not sure if it's Buddhist or not.
So this is what the road looks like. You can see there's a sidewalk, but it is
now a parking lot for motorbikes and stuff like that.
Wow, that guy's delivery box was huge on that moped.
It's like you could put a body in there.
So the shops around here are just like local places... there's a hardware shop right across the street.
You get like cheap clothing shops and a little corner mom & pop store.
I've noticed these kinds of gateways here. That's a Buddhist gateway, by the way.
It's got the... Manja, the red Manja on the top there.
Not to be confused with a swastika.
And so there's like all these little entranceways into the alleys of this neighborhood.
There's more neighborhood on this side, over here as well. All back in here.
So many residential alleyways and stuff like that.
My goal is to cross the street and go here, through this gate.
This really old looking gate. I really wonder how old it is.
This is how crossing works.
Just look...
...and go.
I have no idea what it says, except I understand the kanji on the very far left hand side is "mun"
which means door or gate.
And so we're in.
I don't know if this neighborhood name is called Thuy Khue as well, there's so many things I don't know.
There's so many things I don't know about Vietnamese life, how they organize
names of neighborhoods and stuff like that.
So you see a lot of 3 or 4 story high Villa type of apartments
and they have the bars and stuff on their balconies.
I don't know why, theft is not too much of a problem here, people are very respectful.
(This area is safe, but other areas of Hanoi might not be.)
I don't know what's over here, is this a temple?
I'm just exploring back here, some of these areas I've never been to in my life.
Sounds like a crowd.
**Loud men's chattering noises**
Oh, there's a lunch hall.
That's a local bakery shop.
I did not know this was back here.
It's like a mini mini marketplace.
This stuff here is "ghost money", paper money...
and every afternoon, people burn them to appease the spirits and pray for good luck and good fortune and stuff like that.
This is about 1:00pm, after the lunch rush.
Seems like a very chill street food shop, but nobody's there right now.
I like these vines coming down to the power line.
Now I have a feeling that if I keep going it'll take me directly to the lake.
And that's kind of not what I want to do.
I want to sort of zig-zag around this neighborhood and get lost.
Cause every time I've ever been in here,
I got lost.
You know, in Korea, walking around alleys and stuff
I pretty much have a very good sense of direction.
You know? I turn left 3 times, I know that I'm going back where I came from, and that kind of stuff.
Which way is east, which way is west.
Right now I know I'm heading north.
Wow, look at all these power lines.
Very cool.
I like the sound of the birds.
If I keep going straight, I'll run into West Lake real soon.
So I'm going to stop that, and just go this way.
Wow, these power cables are super low. My head will definitely touch this.
It's very interesting, the architecture, in a lot of the back alley neighborhoods I've noticed.
You get the modern style villas, and then you get old places like this.
With these different sized stones.
On walls, these older style walls. Wow, look at all that broken glass on the top.
That is home security for you.
I don't know what this structure was originally a part of, maybe a temple or something
Temple wall? I have no idea.
Back here, you do have to worry about mopeds and motorcycles.
So always keep an ear (and eye) open. You can hear this guy...
This thing is all barbed up, I don't know what's in there.
Something's back there, something old and protected.
I'll keep going this way.
Very nice cool breeze coming through here.
There's a lot of places that have little birds and stuff hanging from the rafters.
Little bird cages like this.
Ah, I came out to the lake.
Way faster than I thought.
So what I'll do is I'll back track through the neighborhood, in a different direction
back towards home.
So this is West Lake.
The biggest lake in Hanoi.
So there's essentially park land the entire perimeter of the lake.
People can go jogging, sit on benches, work out.
You know, chill.
It's a very cool spot.
Lakeside, there's these kind of like shellfish restaurants.
Reminds me of "jogae gui jib"(grilled seafood restaurants) in Korea.
They got all their seafood dancing in the window.
I don't know how good this stuff is, but to my knowledge, it's all fresh water clams and crabs and stuff.
So it might be fished out of this lake, West Lake, which is kind of dirty.
Or maybe some other nearby fresh water source.
So along this road, there's a lot of nicer style buildings.
You can see this one here.
It's kind of like old, renovated villa style.
This is what Vietnam looks like guys.
I know I'm kind of in more of an open area right now.
And the back alleys I took you through. Very short tour.
That's part of these walks, you know, like I knew I was going to hit the lake sooner than I thought.
So at least you guys get to see this as well.
And then we'll back track into the neighborhood.
And kind of zig-zag and get lost.
Hopefully. That's always fun.
They're gutting a lot of buildings and doing lots of renovation stuff, I've noticed, around here.
In Hanoi, there's just so much construction.
Everywhere... construction, construction.
They're really hustling to get things built.
I feel like it's Korea, 20 to 30 years ago.
Now, I just love walking. I know that this city is built for mopeds, you definitely need to have a moped if you live here.
and you want to commute around the city. But walking is just so good as well.
You know me, I love walking and exploring and stuff like that.
All the Seoul Walk videos I did in Korea.
It's great that I can do it here in Hanoi, although I definitely need to be careful about hydration here.
In Korea, I would go for like 8 hours walking, you know. Drink water here and there.
And I would be fine. Here...
I walk for like one hour, and I sweat out so much water.
It's definitely good to stay hydrated while walking around Vietnam, no matter where you are.
Local guy, he's got a fishing pole.
Ready to do some fishing. Is he in his boxers?
Looks like it.
Eh, Vietnam.
Woah, look at this gate.
Here's a beer hall.
This is a giant beer hall, lots of people.
Having some lunch and some drinks.
Seems to be a very popular thing, beer halls.
In Hanoi.
I've noticed while walking around, there's large places like this, lot of people just outside eating some good food, having some good conversations.
Sharing some good drinks.
Alright, we're cutting back in.
Towards the other road.
I love the greenery around here, it's just like trees and vines and other stuff.
You can see all that greenery just growing on the side of that building.
Very cool.
So this video, which was meant to be a back alley walking video
ended up turning around to be me walking the perimeter of the neighborhood.
Cause I accidentally went to the lake too soon.
But there's gotta be a way to come back into it.
To show you guys more.
You can see that tall tower in the distance, that's the Lotte Tower, here in Hanoi. It's the tallest building in Hanoi.
We're now in my hood.
Well, closer to my actual place of residence.
There's some local shops across the street there.
One of the marts, I go there and I buy like shaving cream and soap and stuff if I need it.
It's kind of like a mini mini mart.
My first time in there, the girl - the daughter of the owner of the place, was listening to a bunch of Kpop.
So right away, I was like I know that song.
And then her father, was like "Are you American?"
"I love Trump. I love Trump." And I was like "I don't think everybody loves Trump."
Then he's like "I love America." and I was like "Cool!"
Check this out, is this jackfruit?
Very cool.
Jackfruit for sale. And a dog, eating some jackfruit.
I've noticed there are a lot of dogs just roaming around the place.
Eating stuff or whatever. A lot of it seems to be dogs that live at those residence, but they just
walk in the street and stuff. I'm afraid they're going to die, it's crazy.
This is the entrance to another Buddhist temple.
Here's some more back alley stuff, but I'm not going to go back into there.
This is my local gas station.
You can see across the street, there's these nicer looking, French villa style homes.
Mine is up in here, behind these ones facing the road.
So then it's really nice, you know? It's quiet.
I don't have to face all this traffic and honking and stuff like that.
Right here where it says Thu Cuc Clinic, my apartment is directly behind it.
It's in this alley right there.
Where this bus is about to block my view.
So right down that alley, the blue building, in the back, that's my apartment building.
My unit faces the backside of it, so I don't hear any of this noise, what-so-ever, which is great.
Alright, so now that you know where I live, let me take some little funky back alleys here.
So we're almost doing a full loop, back to where I started the beginning of the video.
That gives you a good sense of the neighborhood.
There's a full-on actual hospital right here.
So that's really good, just in case something happens.
Somehow, whatever, if I need to, I can just run over here.
There's an emergency room right there on the 1st floor.
There's a whole ton of cars dropping off people, what's happening?
They got all the staff out here, what are they doing? Collecting equipment?