Hanoi Soccer Fever

We arrived in Hanoi on Christmas Eve and found a huge celebration on the streets... naturally, with the large Catholic population in Vietnam, we assumed this was a Christmas celebration... well you know what happens when you assume...

It turned out that Thailand and Vietnam played the first leg of Southeast Asian Championship Soccer tournament that night in Thailand and Vietnam won the game 2-1. There are just over 3 million people in Hanoi and I'm fairly certain we saw at least 2 million of them that night screaming at the top of their lungs in the streets of Hanoi. Luckily for us, we happened upon this scene and enjoyed a very surreal Christmas Eve with the vast majority of Hanoi.

Fast forward to a few days later and the final leg of the SE Asian Cchampionship was being played in Hanoi... we went off to Halong Bay for a few days but made sure that we would be in Hanoi for the game to hopefully snag a last minute ticket... Unfortunately, the traffic into Hanoi on Sundays is about 10 times worse than a Sunday afternoon drive on I-70 after skiing so we barely made it to Hanoi in time for the game.. no way we would make it to the stadium in time... probably a good thing.

The Vietnamese team barely held off the Thai team with a 1-1 tie which meant that Vietnam won the championship for the first time in 40 some years... This time, I'm fairly certain that all 3 million Hanoi citizens were on the streets celebrating... A scene that rivals even the Broncos first Super Bowl win. Absolutely incredible...

The best part about this is that Jodi and I had a front row seat to all of the madness because there's a multi-level KFC right downtown that overlooks the main plaza in Hanoi... armed with mashed potatoes and fried chicken, we watched the people from the second level balcony and enjoyed our delicious meal. Good times...

By the way, no one was drinking at the celebration and therefore no fights, no fires and no flipped cars... Weird.
And Asians love KFC!


By the way, Jodi got pooped on by a pigeon two days ago... I hid by amusement at the time but trust me, I was laughing inside... just a lesson I've learned from 18 months of marriage... This puts the total number that I've seen a bird poop on at 2 (Nik Fodor was number 1).
I bet no one can beat this record...

Happy New Year!