It’s not often that I shoot weddings. When I do, I make sure it’s in another country with a bride and groom I’ve never met.

After a week in the mountains we retraced our path back to Hanoi by hopping the night train from Lao Cai. We arrived at the crack of 05:22 to mellow streets and a city that’s stolen our hearts.

Unfortunately, coffee doesn’t happen before 7am so we had to pedal around a bit. We decided to head over to Hoan Kiem Lake. To our surprise (and excitement) it was car-free Sunday. This meant no cars, mopeds or other motorized contraptions allowed on the loop around the lake. Needless to say we joined the non-motorized extravaganza and pedaled several laps until a cafe opened.

After sufficient over-caffeination, we headed in the direction of our hotel. As if car-free wasn’t exciting enough, we saw there was a wedding photo shoot in progress. We had seen a few already in our travels and always noticed the large amount of photographers participating. Perhaps it’s tradition to have at least a dozen camera jockeys commemorate your special day?

Without hesitation, I passed Chris my bike and joined in the the melee. I figured I might get some weird looks or the hairy eyeball but no such thing happened. In fact, I was absorbed by the energy of the group. We all moved from location to location with our roving pod consisting of, the bride and groom, their stylist, the core photographers and assistants, and then the rest of us. It was actually the most relaxed I felt the whole trip while taking pictures of people. I was so in the flow that I forgot to take off my helmet. I only realized this after I discovered a couple of my fellow photographers taking pictures of me.

I hung in there for 30 minutes before I was exhausted and decided it was time to move on. I looked around and found Chris holding court with his own crowd of admirers.

We worked our way to the hotel and got to the business of breaking down and packing up the bikes for Cambodia. With that task completed we now had a chance to enjoy a few more hours around Hanoi.

I had been reading some about vegetarian food options around the city. After being spoiled in SaPa with lots of non-meat options, I was really curious about what Hanoi had to offer. I found a great blog and then put together an afternoon food tour/scavenger hunt.

After the third stop, we had to call it. We were stuffed with everything from banh mi to fried dough balls to tomato tofu bun. It was a successful vegetarian food mission and a wonderful end to our time in Hanoi.

Time for Cambodia and the Temples of Angkor!