March 6-8
Just one of the millions of motorbikes in Hanoi. Yep, that's a motorbike behind the art!
Shaun and I touched down in Vietnam in the early evening hours of Tuesday, March 6th.It was the first time either of us had been to Asia and we were both excited and nervous. We were doing a tour with Intrepid travel which started on Wednesday evening, but we flew in one night early so we could get settled before the tour started. After going through the normal customs routine (severe looking guy checks out passport without speaking to us) we walked out into the arrivals area of Hanoi Airport to a swarm of taxi drivers looking for a fare. It could have been a very intimidating start to the trip, but when we had booked our extra night at the hotel we had also booked a hotel transfer at a cost of $20. The ride to the hotel was about an hour long and there are some notoriously shady taxi drivers in Hanoi, so we both agreed that paying a little extra for the hotel transfer would be a good idea. I must say, when we saw the young smiling driver holding a sign with my name on it, we were both really happy we had booked the transfer.
The ride into Hanoi was insane. As we later learned, there are 3.5 Million motorbikes in the city of Hanoi and 5000 new bikes are registered every day. The taxi swerved in and out of the lane, flashing his lights and beeping his horn at all the motorbikes and trucks on the highway. And then we got into the city streets, which was just a mass of cars, people and motorbikes, motorbikes, motorbikes. The system for learning to ride is apparently this: forget everything you know about road rules and start over. There are thousands of intersections and almost no traffic lights so everyone just comes into the intersection at the same time and honks their horn to let the other people know they are approaching. Somehow they all manage to avoid hitting each other, but I haven't quite figured that part out yet.
Our initial plan was to go out and explore a little that first night, but by the time we arrived at the hotel at 9PM we were a little shell shocked so we just checked in and went to bed. The hotel was nicer than I expected. We had a large room with a decent sized bathroom and a window out to the street. The window clearly had double paned glass because we could barely hear all the crazy street noise below.
The hotel room was spacious and clean
The next morning we woke up and headed down to the breakfast on the first floor. Breakfast was a bit of everything. They had little croissants, pastries, fruit and french toast for those looking for something more "western", but they also had fried rice, steamed dumplings, sauteed cabbage and some kind of rice porridge. Shaun and I had a bit of both. Personally, I loved the cabbage and the fried rice, which was good since we would see that a lot in the days to come. The big surprise was the coffee. It reminded me a bit of the coffee you get in New Orleans. It was super dark and thick and looked a bit muddy, but it had a really nice flavor. The coffee at the hotel was just served with fresh milk on the side, but since fresh milk is a luxury for most Vietnamese, they often serve it with sweetened, condensed milk which is lovely if you just add a little bit.
After breakfast I continued my quest to get caught up on blogging, while Shaun went up to the "fitness center" to work out. In this case, the fitness center was a treadmill, an old elliptical and a stationary bike. Either way, he was glad to get in a work out and I was happy to get closer to being caught up on my writing. By now, it was almost lunch time so we showered up and headed out into the streets of Hanoi to get lunch.
There is an art form to crossing the streets here. With hundreds of motor bikes coming at you from all directions, your instinct would be to run, but that would get you killed. You actually just need to step into the street and walk very slowly across, giving the motorbike riders the time to size up the situation and change their direction accordingly. Either way, the first time is absolutely terrifying! So on we walked, trying not to get killed, until we got down to the Old Town. We found a little spot where a bunch of people were eating Pho and decided to stop for lunch.
Eating Pho on the streets of Hanoi
Pho is arguably the most famous Vietnamese street food. It is a noodle soup that is served with chicken or more popularly, beef. On the side they give you heaps of fresh mint and basil, along with bean sprouts and chilis. We ordered two bowls of Pho and some deep fried rolls of some sort and we sat down on the two little plastic chairs on the side of the street with everyone else. As we ate we started chatting with the British guy next to us. He had been to Vietnam many times and assured us that the cities were not all as crazy as Hanoi. The two craziest cities in fact, were the first and last on the Vietnam part of the tour, Hanoi and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). It was nice to chat with someone who had been here a bunch and to know that the next stops would be more peaceful. As for lunch, the Pho was yummy but I avoided the fried things since I wasn't sure what they were! I figured I could get more adventurous after we had our local guide.
The rest of the afternoon we wandered the streets, checked out the little shops in the Old Town and watched in wonder as the motorbikes whizzed by. We decided to make our way over to the Temple of Literature, about 2 Kilometers from the Old Town. It was listed in the guide book as a "retreat from the frenetic streets of Hanoi". Sold!! It was quite pretty inside. It was originally constructed in 1070 but has had to be either renovated or reconstructed many times over the years due to war and other natural disasters. The temple was originally built in honor of Confuscius, but starting in the 13th century, it was also used as a temple to the scholars who had earned their doctorates in the 13th-16th centuries. Today, it is still used for cultural events and it is featured on the back of the $100,000 Vietnamese Dong Note.
Inside the temple of literature
These stelae have the names of doctorates inscribed on them. Love the turtles that hold them up!
And speaking of Vietnamese money, I should give you a little background on the Dong because it was quite interesting the first few days when we tried to figure it out. Basically, a single US dollar is worth about 20,000 Vietnamese Dong. So when you go to the ATM here, you need to take out at least 2 Million Dong to get a hundred dollars! It is quite a shock when you see a beer on a menu for 35,000 Dong, until you realize that's basically about $1.68. And Hanoi is considered to be a very expensive city!
A sign from one of the bars we went to in Hanoi
So after our afternoon of wandering in the hot sun, we headed back to the hotel to shower up and meet the tour group. It was quite the group! That first night there were 9 of us, including Shirley and David, a husband and wife from Sydney, Pam and Aidan, a mother and son from New Zealand, Carl from Germany, Nikita from New Zealand and Meredith from Australia. (The next day we would be joined by Kerrie and Katrina, cousins from Australia and Lorenzo from Italy/America/London). Our tour leader, Bon was from Vietnam and impressed me right away. He grew up very poor in Vietnam and just learned English in his 20's but had a better English vocabulary than many native speakers I've known!
As for my fellow travelers, the group dynamics were good right from the start. After our little orientation, Bon asked us whether we would like to go out to dinner somewhere nice but back in town (about a 30 minute walk) or local but not fancy, everyone agreed right away on local but not fancy. That would be very common in those first days together. And there were other things that made us a good cohesive group. Nobody had any dietary restrictions and everyone was pretty adventurous with food, nobody smoked but everyone enjoyed a good beer or cocktail, and everyone had a good sense of humor. Of course, everyone has their quirks, but considering the horror stories you sometimes hear about group travel, this was an excellent group.
Our first group dinner was excellent. We ate at a little place near the hotel where Shaun and I ordered a caramelized pork dish, sauteed vegetables and of course, spring rolls. The whole dinner was delicious and it was a nice chance to get to know our group. Everyone had a great time but we made it a pretty early night since it had been a travel day for most.
Dinner the first night was delicious!
The next morning was our first real "tour" day and it was a full one. We met up at 8:30AM and boarded a bus to head to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum. The streets were complete mayhem as usual and Bon joked with us before we started, telling us that you need 4 things to survive the roads in Hanoi: Good driver, good horn, good brakes and good luck! Our luck was good and we made it to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum without incident.
The mausoleum was interesting. The whole experience is choreographed by armed guards and there are lots of rules. We were warned about the dress code by Bon the night before so we knew that there were no shorts or bare shoulders allowed. The rest was explained as we arrived. We had to form two lines, keep our hands out of our pockets and walk when we were told. We silently filed into the granite building where we walked past the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh, looking just like you picture him (thin face, long pointy beard) if only a little paler. Then we silently filed out past the armed guards. The whole experience took about 5 minutes total and was quite surreal. One thing was clear though, which was the fact that these people revere Ho Chi Minh.
The Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh
The Presidential Palace, originally built by the French. We saw a lot of this architecture and the yellow color scheme here
The Ho Chi Minh Museum
We got a better understanding of why after we came out into the main courtyard and got a little history lesson from Bon. Ho Chi Minh is mainly known for defeating the French and creating the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (a communist country), as well as leading the North during the time of the Vietnam war, but it seems he really is beloved here for the work he did in bringing education and literacy to the masses and teaching them to value themselves and their country. One story we heard from Bon was about how he proposed the people would educate themselves. He said that those who know a lot need to teach those who know a little and those who know a little need to teach those who know nothing. Whatever you think about his politics and the cost of the war, he at least understood the value of an educated and literate population.
After the Mausoleum we went to the Ho Chi Minh museum and it was one of many times to come that I was really glad we had a local guide. Unlike a normal museum, this one was full of symbolic paintings, sculptures and poetry. We wouldn't have made heads or tails of it if we had done it independently.
From there we continued our journey into the life of Ho Chi Minh by doing a tour of the grounds of the Royal Palace and the Stilt House where Ho Chi Minh supposedly lived for most of his time as President (because he thought the palace was too opulent). I would be really curious to read an unbiased biography of HCM when we get home because his life seems fascinating but you only get one side of it here.
By the time we left the Ho Chi Minh complex, we were all starving. Luckily lunch that day was incredible!! We went out to a place called Bun Cha Nem Cua de Bac Kim for a famous Vietnamese dish called Bun Cha. The restaurant was crazy busy so we had to fight our way up three spiral staircases to get to a floor where they could seat us. (I tried very hard not to think about what would happen if there was a fire). It was busy for good reason. They serve you a bowl of broth with a ridiculous assortment of "accessories" which they simply pile onto plates and serve family style. They serve grilled pork, crab spring rolls, rice noodles, chilies and giant piles of fresh herbs, all on separate plates. Your job as the "eater" is to throw all of it into your bowl and just go to town. It was a big old delicious mess and everyone had a great time and full bellies by the time we left.
Bun Cha!!
That afternoon we took a bus out to the Museum of Ethnology, where we learned about all the different peoples that make up Vietnam. It was interesting, and it had a neat display of Vietnamese houses out back, but to be honest we were all pretty beat so we ended up spending a bunch of time at a cafe on the grounds of the museum. There are certain times here that you can really feel the influence of the French. We saw it that day in the desserts (things like Creme Brulee) and we would see it throughout Vietnam in the breads. The French ruled Vietnam for close to 100 years and during that time they made the baguette a staple of the Vietnamese diet. Every morning you see women carrying big baskets of hot baguettes that they sell on the streets, and most of the lunch places serve baguette sandwches as well.
Shaun outside the replica of a Vietnamese meeting house at the museum of ethnology
We headed back to the hotel at that point for a quick rest before continuing our crazy day. (Not all of our days were like this, this one was just jam packed). Next up was a water puppet show at a theatre in the center of the city. Water Puppets is an ancient art form here that started in the countryside. I would try to explain it but its too difficult to figure out how they do it all. Lets just say that its like a marionette show, but the stage is water instead of wood. It was quite interesting and fun. My only regret is that they didn't serve beer because next up was a Cyclo Tour!
At the water puppet show
Cyclos are basically bikes with a little carriage attached to the back. Everyone was in their own cyclo so we had a little caravan of 13 cyclos going through the streets of Hanoi. Do you remember the post from Germany? Well I thought I was going to Scheisse my Leiderhosen again. Shaun bought a "helmet cam" for this trip and he took video of parts of the ride, so we will post it to You Tube and you can experience it yourself!
On our cyclo tour of Hanoi
After the Cyclo tour we headed to a place called Yin-Yang for dinner. Everyone in our crew was up for Vietnamese pretty much every night so whatever Bon suggested we were up for it! We were not dissapointed that night. Cashew shrimp and chicken,spring rolls, rice, fresh fruit for dessert and lots of beers! Everyone was really happy with dinner and shockingly we all decided to go out for beers afterwards! We ended up at a place called Hair of the Dog, a cool nightclub with cushions on the floor and crazy drinks. We stayed for a couple of drinks but everyone was just dead on their feat so we headed back to the hotel pretty early.
Katrina, Bon and Lorenzo at the bar after dinner
Carl, Dave and Shirley at the bar
So, that was it for the first day of the tour. Wow, just writing this I'm amazed at all we did! I'm going to have to tell you a little less if I expect to get any posts done while we're here! I will say this one thing: Vietnam is both nothing and everything that you might expect. Some of the infrastructure is worse than I could have imagined but many things are better than I imagined, like the hotel rooms. The same goes for the food. There are people sitting on the streets eating things that would have ended up in our waste bins in America but that is not an option in a country where so many have so little. And even the tiniest roadside stand can have some of the most delicious, flavorful meals you could ever want to eat; full of fresh herbs and stock recipes that have been handed down for generations. And the people are just lovely. They may ask you a hundred times a day to buy something, but they do it with a smile and a quick "No thank you" was all it would usually take to allow you to walk on. So after our first few days I was ready to see more. I was still a little nervous, but that's probably a good thing because it keeps you on your toes. Either way, we started this trip in search of adventure and this was clearly a place that would bring us adventure!
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