Hectic Hanoi...


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Asia » Vietnam » Red River Delta » Hanoi
April 11th 2009
Published: April 23rd 2009
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1: Water Puppets 13 secs
Another easy journey from Ninh Binh to Hanoi and by catching the local bus for the 2 hour journey we actually landed where we had thought we would and as it was a bus station we got a public bus to the Old Quarter where we'd planned to spend our time here.. along with every other Western person here!

We immediately fell in love with this city, our hostel was found down a back alley with the front facing a house which sold meat from their doorstep. The Old Quarter really is a maze of little alleys and streets and you definately need a map to get around otherwise you'd be wandering round for days. Thankfully we took both a map and business card of our guesthouse in the event we did get lost. You'll be surprised how easy it is to find a guesthouse, go out to have a wander round and then have no idea a) how to get back and b) the name of your place to ask people.. yes we've done it and have met lots of people who've done it too!

We wanted to go on our Halong Bay trip the following day so spent our first afternoon wanding round the little streets going in every travel agency trying to find the best deal for us. In the end we got a bit fed up and did the worst thing of booking though our hotel but in this case it actually paid off as you will read later. We didn't want to go on the cheapest of the cheap option as it normally only leads to tears so went for a mid range tour at $40 each which promised small groups, excellent food, a good boat and a good guide so we were thoroughly looking forward to our 2 day 1 night trip.

Our first evening was spent drinking Bia Hoi on Bia Hoi Junction with a lovely Australian lady we met when we were dumped on her table for dinner. Bia Hoi is the cheapest beer in the world.. probably not the best but it sure is good. It's brewed every day and sold from the barrel by the litre or glass. In the tourist areas you get it for around 3,000D a glass (12p) but if you find a stall where the local people go you can get it for 3,000D a LITRE! Bargain. The first glass normally tastes and smells a bit like old beer pipes but after the first glass you get used to it and start to enjoy the fresh taste and down glass after glass all whilst sitting in the comfort of a tiny plastic chair perched either on the street, in the gutter or the middle of the road if you arrive too late!

We also realised that it's actually cheaper to drink beer here than soft drinks.. and sometimes in the case of Bia Hoi, cheaper than even water!! Some of the price levels for things amaze us here in Asia each and every day.. take for instance some of the souvenirs we have purchased.. a pair of pearl earrings cost less than a cup of coffee in a posh coffee house.. how does that work?! Normally hotel rooms are dirt cheap and even though we don't catch them, we have heard of taxi rides costing way more than a hotel for the night for even a short distance.. Crazy!

After our return from Halong Bay we headed straight for the train station to book our tickets to Sapa for a few days
Temple in the Old QuarterTemple in the Old QuarterTemple in the Old Quarter

Check the wires out!
later. We were glad we booked them direct rather than through a tourist office as we only paid $11 for a hard sleeper and had been quoted double that to book it though a booking office.. bloody cheek! So we were left with 2 days to fill in Hanoi and thought that would be pretty easy as there's loads to do and if you get stuck you can always just sit and drink Bia Hoi all day to pass the time.

On our first day we got up early to go and see Frozen Ho. This is Ho Chi Minh's body in the morseleum and we thought it would be mildly interesting so we dressed up in our best clothes.. no scruffs allowed as well as no talking or sniggering.. and set off on the short walk there. It took us a while to find the way in but we were a bit annoyed that once we'd gone round in the 100th circle it wasn't even open to the public today so we only got to see the outside. To try and make our trip there worthwhile we went to have a look round his old stilt house and the presidential palace. This was ok but most of the grounds are out of bounds and his other house was being renovated so the 15,000D entrance fee was perhaps a bit steep to just look at the stilt house and a pond.

Sophie wanted to see the Water Puppets while we were here too so just before lunchtime we went to book our tickets for that evening but found that there were only the cheap seats available for the 2.15pm show. The show was really good and highly entertaining and even if our seats weren't the best we really enjoyed the 45 minute show with all the pretty colours and music. Advice to people coming here would be book a few days in advance as they sell out quickly despite having 5 performances a day!

As a slight detour on this blog we'd like to tell you about a few of the not so nice things we've encountered on our travels here.. for all the nice things these kind of things really make our skin crawl...

Long Nails on Men - this is not just in Vietnam as we witnessed this in Cambodia too but it seems to be quite fashionable for men to have long fingernails. Not only are they long but also shaped into a point which makes it all the more creepy to see. We are not sure why this is but it really should never ever catch on anywhere else as it is wrong!

Mole Hairs- another thing that is found on just the men and this one makes us feel even more uncomfortable... many men seem to grow any hairs that come out of moles on their face & neck. We have seen some hairs that must be about 20cm long. It's normaly just 3 or 4 hairs and looks stupid... why do they do it? We thought that maybe it was a good luck thing?

Toenails - this is a unisex thing and could well be the worst of the lot! The Vietnamese seem to have a thing about nails, particularly toenails. We have seen people clipping their toenails with nail clippers on street corners whilst tending to their stall (not food yet thank god!), having pedicures on the street but the worst had to be when Sophie saw a man clipping his fingernails and then toenails on the sleeper bus and left all the clippings in the seat for the next person.. GROSS!

Spitting - again a truly Asian thing.. people love to spit here and it's disgusting. They don't just do it in private either, you hear people coughing up their right lung from the kitchen while you eat breakfast then hear it as they spit it out all over the floor. It really makes Sophie want to vomit whenever she sees it which is about 100 times a day and she is just thankful that to date she has managed to avoid getting anything spat on her as she walked down the street. For all the rules in Singapore that are silly we can totally see why they introduced this one as it's disgusting.

Hooters & Horns - another of Asia's love affairs seems to be with the hooter on their car/bus/truck. You will quickly learn the rules of the road here.. if there is something in front of you you need to beep.. eg.. a moped beeps at people or bikes, a car beeps at mopeds, a van beeps at cars and so on until you get to the HGV's at the top of the chain. Even if there is nothing in the way they beep anyway for good measure just in case anyone might throw themselves in the road.
The worst culprits by far are the bus drivers who basically lean on their horn for an entire journey whether it be 5 minutes or 5 hours, even if it's a sleeper bus there is no stopping them! The Asians have also introduced these really awful hooters which you press once and the horn starts really loud and lasts for about 10 seconds reducing in the volume as it goes. People here must go deaf very early as the noise is so loud you can't hear yourself think as you walk down a road.

Crossing the Road - you may have read this already in other things about Asia and Vietnam is probably the worst of the lot, but crossing the road in Asia is an artform! Sometimes if you are really lucky there will be a green man but even if there is this doesn't always mean walk as mopeds are still very likely to come flying around the corner at you. If there is no green man but a zebra crossing we have no idea what this means but we use them anyway.. maybe they have been identified as being the place with the best view of what might hit you?!
So to cross a road whether it be a one way small street (when we say one way it means that most of the traffic goes one way) or 6 lane main street running through town this is what you do... wait until there are slightly less mopeds coming then just step out in the road and edge very very slowly to the other side. Don't stop or speed up as this only causes accidents. We quickly came to realise that the mopeds will go round you, the only problem is cars which can't go round you so we tend to try and avoid stepping out in front of these. In any case the whole ordeal is quite scary and you just have to kind of close your eyes and hope you reach the other side.. either that or do what Sophie does and stand on the other side of Dale to the flow of the traffic and use him as a sheild!

Propoganda Announcements - maybe this is something in all communists countries but it seems totally unecessary to have a loud speaker playing music and giving out announcements at any time of the day.. let alone at 5.30 in the morning! There have been numerous mornings up in the North of Vietnam where we have been woken up at this time but an awful noise we don't understand. Surely the people who have to hear it every day can't be too happy either even if they do all seem to be up at 5.30am anyway!

So back to our time in Hanoi...

The remainder of our time was met with much delight from Dale as we wandered the maze of streets going round and round and round looking in all the lovely shops whilst Sophie tried very hard not to go crazy with buying too many things. We find it funny here in Asia that you get streets dedicated to certain things.. gravestone street, drum making street, embroidered badge street and so on. We are also amazed that there are just soooo many shops everywhere, stranger than this though is that all sell the same thing. One day we walked down about 5 narrow
Funny dog walkingFunny dog walkingFunny dog walking

There are lots of these little dogs in Hanoi. THis one was like a Mexican jumping bean and even jumped around when it was pooing and weeing!
streets that all sold tshirts or belts or fake handbags aimed at the local buyers. Each shop is jam packed with stuff so it's a nightmare to look round if you want to buy and we really have to wonder how these people make a living from it all.

We'd booked our night train ticket to Lai Chai in the far North for Tuesday evening and as much as we'd loved our time in Hanoi we were looking forward to leaving the city smog behind us and getting to see the hill tribes in this beautiful part of the country..

We did Halong Bay in between our time in Hanoi so check the next blog for this trip...


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Sophie outside Ho Chi MInh MuseumSophie outside Ho Chi MInh Museum
Sophie outside Ho Chi MInh Museum

she didn't get any futher than this!


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