Hanoi

Vietnam babay yeeeeehaaaaaw!!! Wow what a difference from China man!! Gary got better almost the minute we got on the plane for Nam and was cured when we got off. Our hotel was huge and the staff were super nice and spoke good English and straight away we felt ourselves relaxing another 50 per cent leaving us now with a 10 per cent motivation to travel…that should be enough. We arrived in Hanoi at night time so didn’t really have any experience until the next day when we woke up at around 1.30 and headout out for brekkie. This place is buzzing….every building is a business, there are coffee shops on every corner and the streets are full of motorbikes. Just crossing the street is an epic but you just have to move out, keep walking and hope that the bikes don’t hit you…its basically like playing a game of chicken with 50 bikes every time you want to cross the street. The people here seem really industrious they are ALL always busy making something or trying to sell this and that- its really noticeable straight of the bat.

We are staying in the old quarter of Hanoi and it has so much character and really lived up to our expectations of ‘Nam if you know what I mean. Most coffe shops play 60’s and 70’s American rock and roll which really adds to the whole atmosphere here. Also there are a shitload of westerners which is pretty cool. The first coffee shop we wentr into we met two really nice English girls and chatted to them for around 2 hours. It was really good just to meet people randomly like that again.

The food here is just unreal- everything is so fresh and every café sernves all kind of fresh fruit juices and salads which is great after the fried food fest that was China….still though even though I have promised myself that I am going to be a health freak its still just tooo hard to pass u on the cakes.

There is a lake just around the corner from where we are staying so we decided to take a stroll down, have a coffee and play with the new camera for a while. We were walking back to the hotel and all of a sudden people started pulling in their motorbikes and cars onto the side of the road and running to the side of the lake. I am not joking there were hundreds of people gathered in around 5minutes from nowhere. Being nosey parkers we muscled our way in to see what was going on. I was full sure it was some kind of race around the lake or something but we couldnt see a thing so we asked one of the Vienamese and they said they were looking for a tortoise. I was literally just after reading about them in the lonely planet apparently there is a legend that tortoises live in the lake that are apparently decendant from some big golden tortoise and its really good luck to see one. Gary got a photo of the head so hopefully our good luck will continue. Well we were absolutely wrecked after all that sightseeing(ahem) so headed back to get ready for dinner…ah it’s a hard life.

After arsing around for two days and doing nothing we done a walk of Hanoi that was recommended in the lonely planet…it was deadly. We passed through streets where they sold nothing but shoes, a street of art galleries, a street full of blacksmiths,another full of masons that make tombstones and got a really good feeling for the town in general. The book recommended a place that’s apparently the smallest temple in Hanoi so we went inside for a closer look. It basically down an alleyway at the back of someones house. We went in and saw some pews and a crappy altar and thought that was it but then some bloke just pointed upstairs so we headed up and there were twp alters crammed with offerings for spirts. It was pretty cool but just as we were about to leave we saw two doors and just had to have a little nosey inside.. well behind the doors was FULL of crazy stuff..it was pretty amazing for a little thing hidden in an alleyway and its deadly when you find something like that.

That night we headed to the water puppet theatre which we were advised was a must see. The tickets were 2 euro or something ridiculously cheap like that and the show was seriously good. The have little Vietnamese folk singers at the side of the stage and the puppeteers are kneed deep in water behind a facade of a house and they move the puppets- apparently it has won loads of awards all over the world. It was well worth the visit and a great introduction to Vietnamese culture and folk music- I even bought a CD…oh yeah and a puppet.

There was really just one other thing that we had to see, or rather someone we had to visit, before we left Hanoi….Uncle Ho. The preserved body of Ho Chi Minh is in a sarcophagus in Hanoi for all to see so we got up seriously early the next day (around 8 am- to think that’s the time I used to leave the house for work every morning) because the mausoleum closes at 10 AM. It was pretty eerie to see this famous dead guy in a glass case surrounded by armed guards bathed in a red light…but man is it cool. We were seriously glad that we made the effort to go there but had to go straight back to bed to sleep for the rest of the day…lazy articles.

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