A Busier Country (Tim)
After getting into our expansive but inexpensive hotel room at 5am and crashing for a couple of hours we decided it was time to explore Hanoi. The streets at 5 in the morning were already busy, with streams of motorbikes, bicycles and buses. It was nice to be back in a place where things were actually going on, in contrast to the sleepy town-sized cities of Laos, where sometimes it was hard to believe anyone lived. Crossing the road is an adventure all in itself, with the huge number of bikes on the road - there just isn't an opening..ever. Traffic lights don't impose any strict regulations on the flow, it seems they are only there for appearance. We learned that the only way to get to the other side is to just walk into the street as if nothing is there and the bikes skirt around you. Every time you cross the road, you feel amazed to be alive after such a suicidal ordeal.
We didn't do much with the day, since there wasn't really much left of it after we'd slept. We managed to find a War museum, with a couple of Vietnam war relics such as planes, tanks, AA guns, rifles - that kind of thing. THere was only a bit of text in English and it all got a bit same-same towards the end but it was still fairly interesting to see the war covered from their perspective, with the photos being mainly of Vietnamese troops and the text obviously biased towards the 'galliantly brave' Viet Cong soldiers. After this, we took a walk to a large lake, around which a large part of the city is based. This is more the rich white tourist area, with high-rise hotels and swanky restaurants - in other words - artificial Vietnam. People who stay in places like this tend to go on day tours in air-con buses, being whisked from one temple to the next and never properly getting to see the country. It must be a shame to coms so far, just to stay in a transposed England or America.
One thing we missed about Thailand whilst in Laos was the tiny street stalls selling unidentifiable, although tasty, foods extremely cheaply, and we were happy to see that Vietnam has many, so on the first night we visited a small place in a backstreet, with tiny plastic tables and chairs as if for children - the Vietnamese are a small race. In a glass jar on the side of our table was a thick red sauce that we ladled into our noodle soup, in order to discover that it was probably, judging from the burning in our mouthes. made from mashed up red chillies. We had to order another beer.
The next day we went to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which is where the embalmed corpse of the deceased leader of Vietnam resides. For the locals, this is like a pilgrimage to worship the great man, so there were massive queues stretching for about 200m. The whole thing is kept moving by armed guards, who give you a little push should you stop walking at all - this is pretty annoying but you don't really want to mess with armed guards. The corpse was quite strange - I've never seen a real body before..it lay in a mood-lit glass case and was made to look quite serene. After this, we visited some temple of literature where the famous Chinese philosophist Confucius lived. It wasn't very interesting, but some of the Chinese-style architecture was pretty cool. In the evening, we went to a water-puppets show. I didn't really know what to expect from this - perhaps some puppeteers with snorkels controlling the puppets from under the water or something. This wasn't the case, as the figures were controlled from behind a screen by sticks on their backs. It originated from many years ago when the rice paddies flooded and the adults put on shows for the children in the evening. It was pretty impressive how well they managed to mimic the movements of water-buffalo and fish and kids playing in the water. After the show, we met up with some of the American girls we met on the gibbon experience, who had just arrived in Hanoi, for a drink. Considering how busy Hanoi is during the day, I'd expect the evenings to be just the same but instead everywhere seems to close at 12 and the streets are almost dead at 1. There are some bars designed for insomniac Westerners though (such as the bar "Half-man Half-noodle" - I don't know what that's all about) so not everyone is forced to an early bed. Before we went out that night, one of the guys working in the guesthouse (a slimey little man) asked if we'd mind doing him a favour and vacating our room because some return customers had booked it out for the next day but he forgot to tell us this before. He said that it was a big family with an old man who needed the space of the room (despite the fact you have to climb 10 sets of stairs to get to it) and that the room we would move into would be exactly the same, with identical beds, just a bit smaller. We couldn't really say no, so agreed.
At 6am the next morning, he knocked on our door and asked us to move. Grumpily, groggily and hungoverly, we shifted our belongings to the new room and were less than happy to find out that there were only 2 beds. By this time it was a bit too late to say anything since our old room was already being cleaned..besides, I think we're all too British to complain.
That day we went to Lenin Park, which is quite like Lumphini park in Bangkok - just a few hectares of grass used as a retreat from the bustling streets of Hanoi. We sat in the shade and drank cold coke and played some chess for a while, then went to a prisinor or war museum where the general message was "the French treated the Vietnamese badly, but the Vietnamese treated the American POW's really well". Again, not much English text but fairly interesting. In the evening we went out to eat with a German girl our age who was staying in the same hotel as us with her family, and was needing to socialise a bit. It also gave Ryan a chance to practice his German, and me and Shaun to wonder what was being said. It turned out she was of the family that had turfed us out of our room, and that her dad wasn't at all an old man needing a lot of space or anything like that - I think the guesthouse guy just wanted to get us out because they charged us $9, but the German family an extortionate $22 for the very same room. We found a place for dinner that cooked some exotic dishes - Ryan had snake heads and Shaun had frogs. I stuck to fish, but the snake and frog meat was actually quite nice. We then went to the hippest night club in the city ('New Century'), only to get turned down for not wearing trousers. By English standards, this is reasonable dress code but the point is in Vietnam it's far far too hot for anything other than shorts. We all threw our only trousers away months ago, so had to find another club (which we quickly left when we found out the drinks were 4 times more expensive than average, which is still only about $3, but we're pennyless backpackers now).
Next day we went on a 3-day boat trip to Halong Bay, a famously picturesque rocky cove on the sea of Vietnam. At one stage we docked at a place called 'The Surprise Cave', the surprise being a large fallisce shaped rock in the last cavern. It was completely different to any cave we went to in Laos, where you get given a candle and have to navigate the precariously slippery stones in almost darkness whilst spilling hot wax on yourself. Here, there were paved walkways, coloured flood lights for effect, dolphin shaped bins every 10m and many many snap-happy tourists. They were very adamant you shouldn't touch or break any of the thousand-year old stalactites, yet to make the walkways they had to cut down hundreds of them. Once back on the boat, we got talking to a pair of Danish guys whilst stretching out on the top deck of the boat. The boat stopped for a while a bit later so we could swim (after cliff and bungee jumping, going in from the top of the large boat seemed pretty easy). Even there, in the middle of the sea, there are small rowing boats that come up to you and try and sell you Oreo biscuits and packets of pringles - a lot of people in Vietnam are now making a living off of the boom in tourism. It can be really annoying, but understandable for a nation so poor.
As dusk approached, we saw from the boat one of the most amazing sunsets I think it's possible to see, with hundreds of deep, vibrant colours stretching across one part of the sky, and the rest was a bright shade of orange. For all of us it was another one of those 'life doesn't get much better than this' sort of moments. In the evening we were shown a couple of drinking games from the Danish guys as well as a Swedish couple we got talking to - a good chance to take advantage of the drinks tab. We found the games to be largely effective, bless the Danish.
Next morning, we were taken to stay for a day and a night on Catbar Island, a nice place that is now completely geared to tourists (unfortunately). Still, an awesome beach where we played some frisbee for a while - this is a pretty uncommon thing in Vietnam so every once in a while a curious Vietnamese guy ran up and tried to throw it a few times and then ran back off into the sea, all the time grinning madly. We also played in the waves like children for a while..well..we hadn't seen the sea since Southern Thailand 2 months previous. That evening, by coincedence, we ran into the German girl from Hanoi and went swimming again since the moon was full, although some guy with a torch came and told us we couldn't go in the water.
The next day we headed back to Hanoi to spend a night, before starting our open bus ticket journey south through Vietnam.
We didn't do much with the day, since there wasn't really much left of it after we'd slept. We managed to find a War museum, with a couple of Vietnam war relics such as planes, tanks, AA guns, rifles - that kind of thing. THere was only a bit of text in English and it all got a bit same-same towards the end but it was still fairly interesting to see the war covered from their perspective, with the photos being mainly of Vietnamese troops and the text obviously biased towards the 'galliantly brave' Viet Cong soldiers. After this, we took a walk to a large lake, around which a large part of the city is based. This is more the rich white tourist area, with high-rise hotels and swanky restaurants - in other words - artificial Vietnam. People who stay in places like this tend to go on day tours in air-con buses, being whisked from one temple to the next and never properly getting to see the country. It must be a shame to coms so far, just to stay in a transposed England or America.
One thing we missed about Thailand whilst in Laos was the tiny street stalls selling unidentifiable, although tasty, foods extremely cheaply, and we were happy to see that Vietnam has many, so on the first night we visited a small place in a backstreet, with tiny plastic tables and chairs as if for children - the Vietnamese are a small race. In a glass jar on the side of our table was a thick red sauce that we ladled into our noodle soup, in order to discover that it was probably, judging from the burning in our mouthes. made from mashed up red chillies. We had to order another beer.
The next day we went to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which is where the embalmed corpse of the deceased leader of Vietnam resides. For the locals, this is like a pilgrimage to worship the great man, so there were massive queues stretching for about 200m. The whole thing is kept moving by armed guards, who give you a little push should you stop walking at all - this is pretty annoying but you don't really want to mess with armed guards. The corpse was quite strange - I've never seen a real body before..it lay in a mood-lit glass case and was made to look quite serene. After this, we visited some temple of literature where the famous Chinese philosophist Confucius lived. It wasn't very interesting, but some of the Chinese-style architecture was pretty cool. In the evening, we went to a water-puppets show. I didn't really know what to expect from this - perhaps some puppeteers with snorkels controlling the puppets from under the water or something. This wasn't the case, as the figures were controlled from behind a screen by sticks on their backs. It originated from many years ago when the rice paddies flooded and the adults put on shows for the children in the evening. It was pretty impressive how well they managed to mimic the movements of water-buffalo and fish and kids playing in the water. After the show, we met up with some of the American girls we met on the gibbon experience, who had just arrived in Hanoi, for a drink. Considering how busy Hanoi is during the day, I'd expect the evenings to be just the same but instead everywhere seems to close at 12 and the streets are almost dead at 1. There are some bars designed for insomniac Westerners though (such as the bar "Half-man Half-noodle" - I don't know what that's all about) so not everyone is forced to an early bed. Before we went out that night, one of the guys working in the guesthouse (a slimey little man) asked if we'd mind doing him a favour and vacating our room because some return customers had booked it out for the next day but he forgot to tell us this before. He said that it was a big family with an old man who needed the space of the room (despite the fact you have to climb 10 sets of stairs to get to it) and that the room we would move into would be exactly the same, with identical beds, just a bit smaller. We couldn't really say no, so agreed.
At 6am the next morning, he knocked on our door and asked us to move. Grumpily, groggily and hungoverly, we shifted our belongings to the new room and were less than happy to find out that there were only 2 beds. By this time it was a bit too late to say anything since our old room was already being cleaned..besides, I think we're all too British to complain.
That day we went to Lenin Park, which is quite like Lumphini park in Bangkok - just a few hectares of grass used as a retreat from the bustling streets of Hanoi. We sat in the shade and drank cold coke and played some chess for a while, then went to a prisinor or war museum where the general message was "the French treated the Vietnamese badly, but the Vietnamese treated the American POW's really well". Again, not much English text but fairly interesting. In the evening we went out to eat with a German girl our age who was staying in the same hotel as us with her family, and was needing to socialise a bit. It also gave Ryan a chance to practice his German, and me and Shaun to wonder what was being said. It turned out she was of the family that had turfed us out of our room, and that her dad wasn't at all an old man needing a lot of space or anything like that - I think the guesthouse guy just wanted to get us out because they charged us $9, but the German family an extortionate $22 for the very same room. We found a place for dinner that cooked some exotic dishes - Ryan had snake heads and Shaun had frogs. I stuck to fish, but the snake and frog meat was actually quite nice. We then went to the hippest night club in the city ('New Century'), only to get turned down for not wearing trousers. By English standards, this is reasonable dress code but the point is in Vietnam it's far far too hot for anything other than shorts. We all threw our only trousers away months ago, so had to find another club (which we quickly left when we found out the drinks were 4 times more expensive than average, which is still only about $3, but we're pennyless backpackers now).
Next day we went on a 3-day boat trip to Halong Bay, a famously picturesque rocky cove on the sea of Vietnam. At one stage we docked at a place called 'The Surprise Cave', the surprise being a large fallisce shaped rock in the last cavern. It was completely different to any cave we went to in Laos, where you get given a candle and have to navigate the precariously slippery stones in almost darkness whilst spilling hot wax on yourself. Here, there were paved walkways, coloured flood lights for effect, dolphin shaped bins every 10m and many many snap-happy tourists. They were very adamant you shouldn't touch or break any of the thousand-year old stalactites, yet to make the walkways they had to cut down hundreds of them. Once back on the boat, we got talking to a pair of Danish guys whilst stretching out on the top deck of the boat. The boat stopped for a while a bit later so we could swim (after cliff and bungee jumping, going in from the top of the large boat seemed pretty easy). Even there, in the middle of the sea, there are small rowing boats that come up to you and try and sell you Oreo biscuits and packets of pringles - a lot of people in Vietnam are now making a living off of the boom in tourism. It can be really annoying, but understandable for a nation so poor.
As dusk approached, we saw from the boat one of the most amazing sunsets I think it's possible to see, with hundreds of deep, vibrant colours stretching across one part of the sky, and the rest was a bright shade of orange. For all of us it was another one of those 'life doesn't get much better than this' sort of moments. In the evening we were shown a couple of drinking games from the Danish guys as well as a Swedish couple we got talking to - a good chance to take advantage of the drinks tab. We found the games to be largely effective, bless the Danish.
Next morning, we were taken to stay for a day and a night on Catbar Island, a nice place that is now completely geared to tourists (unfortunately). Still, an awesome beach where we played some frisbee for a while - this is a pretty uncommon thing in Vietnam so every once in a while a curious Vietnamese guy ran up and tried to throw it a few times and then ran back off into the sea, all the time grinning madly. We also played in the waves like children for a while..well..we hadn't seen the sea since Southern Thailand 2 months previous. That evening, by coincedence, we ran into the German girl from Hanoi and went swimming again since the moon was full, although some guy with a torch came and told us we couldn't go in the water.
The next day we headed back to Hanoi to spend a night, before starting our open bus ticket journey south through Vietnam.
posted by Timmy at Friday, June 16, 2006
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